"You will live on in our children's lives." Was there
no other immortality?
He often thought of his boyhood here. On a ride one day he stopped for a
drink at a spring in a grove of maples surrounding a desolate farmhouse not
more than a mile away from his own. And through the trees as he turned to
go he saw the stark figure of a woman, poorly clad and gaunt and gray. She
stood motionless watching him with a look of sullen bitterness. She was the
last of "the Elkinses," a mountain family run to seed. As he rode away he
saw in the field a boy with a pitchfork in his hands, a meager ragged
little chap. He was staring into the valley at a wriggling, blue smoke
serpent made by the night express to New York. And something leaped in
Roger, for he had once felt just like that! But the woman's harsh voice cut
in on his dream, as she shouted to her son below, "Hey! Why the hell you
standin' thar?" And the boy with a jump of alarm turned back quickly to his
work. At home a few days later, George with a mysterious air took his
grandfather into the barn, and after a pledge of secrecy he said in swift
and thrilling tones, "You know young Bill Elkins? Yes, you do--the boy up
on the Elkins place who lives alone with his mother. Well, look here!"
George swallowed hard. "Bill has cleared out--he's run away! I was up at
five this morning and he came hiking down the road! He had a bundle on his
back and he told me he was off for good! And was he scared? You bet he was
scared! And I told him so and it made him mad! 'Aw, you're scared!' I said.
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