That night the mountaineer told the stranger from the city the story that I have put down in the next chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

The story.

Slowly the big mountaineer filled his cob pipe with strong, home grown tobacco, watching his guest keenly the while, from under heavy brows.  Behind the dark pines the sky was blood red, and below, Mutton Hollow was fast being lost in the gathering gloom.

When his pipe was lighted, Old Matt said, “Well, sir, I reckon you think some things you seen and heard since you come last night are mighty queer.  I ain’t sayin’, neither, but what you got reasons for thinkin’ so.”

Mr. Howitt made no reply.  And, after puffing a few moments in silence, the other continued, “If it weren’t for what you said last night makin’ me feel like I wanted to talk to you, and Pete a takin’ up with you the way he has, I wouldn’t be a tellin’ you what I am goin’ to now.  There’s some trails, Mr. Howitt, that ain’t pleasant to go back over.  I didn’t ’low to ever go over this one again.  Did you and Pete talk much this afternoon?”

In a few words Mr. Howitt told of his meeting with the strange boy, and their conversation.  When he had finished, the big man smoked in silence.  It was as if he found it hard to begin.  From a tree on the mountain side below, a screech owl sent up his long, quavering call; a bat darted past in the dusk; and away over on Compton Ridge a hound bayed.  The mountaineer spoke; “That’s Sam Wilson’s dog, Ranger; must a’ started a fox.”  The sound died away in the distance.  Old Matt began his story.

“Our folks all live back in Illinois.  And if I do say so, they are as good stock as you’ll find anywhere.  But there was a lot of us, and I always had a notion to settle in a new country where there was more room like and land wasn’t so dear; so when wife and I was married we come out here.  I recollect we camped at the spring below Jim Lane’s cabin on yon side of Old Dewey, there.  That was before Jim was married, and a wild young buck he was too, as ever you see.  The next day wife and I rode along the Old Trail ’til we struck this gap, and here we’ve been ever since.

“We’ve had our ups and downs like most folks, sir, and sometimes it looked like they was mostly downs; but we got along, and last fall I bought in the ranch down there in the Hollow.  The boy was just eighteen and we thought then that he’d be makin’ his home there some day.  I don’t know how that’ll be now, but there was another reason too why we wanted the place, as you’ll see when I get to it.

“There was five other boys, as I told you last night.  The oldest two would have been men now.  The girl”—­his voice broke—­“the girl she come third; she was twenty when we buried her over there.  That was fifteen year ago come the middle of next month.