"I've often wondered why you didn't, Uncle Eli," said Hamilton.
"Yo' must remember," the Kentuckian said, "that the mount'neers are a most independent lot. They want to be independent, an' up hyeh, every man is his own master. But, thar bein' no available market if they did work hard, what was the use o' workin'? Some o' them, 'specially down in the gullies, got lazy an' shif'less. But they hung on all the harder to the idees o' the old times,--honor an' hospitality."
"I've always understood," said Hamilton, "that there was more hospitality to be found up here in the mountains than in almost any place on the globe."
"As yo' said," the old man continued, "we're jes' like a crew o' shipwrecked sailors marooned on an island without a boat, without any means o' gettin' away. If some o' the families high up in the gullies are ignorant, it's because they've had no schoolin', not because they haven' got the makin's o' good citizens; if they're a bit careless about religion, it's because they've had no churchin', an' if they don' pay much heed to law, it's because the law has never done much for them. The ocean o' progress," went on the mountaineer, with a flourish, "has rolled all 'roun' the mount'ns, but of all the fleets o' commerce in all these years, thar has not been one to send out a boat to help the marooned mount'neer."
"Didn't they ever try to get help?" queried the boy.
"We're not askin' help," the Kentuckian said, "thar's no whinin' on the mount'ns. I jes' tell yo' that when the time comes for the mount'neers o' Kentucky an' Virginia an' Tennessee an' Carolina to get a fair chance, they'll show yo' as fine a race o' men an' women as the Stars an' Stripes flies over."
"They are mighty fine right now, I think," the boy said.
"They have their good points," the Kentuckian agreed; "thar's nothin' sneakin' in the men up hyeh, an' thar an't any lengths to which a man won't go, to do what he thinks is the squar thing. You've heard about the Beaupoints?"
"It was jes' an incident in one o' these feuds that you were talkin' of, an' I'm goin' to tell yo' about it, to show yo' what a mount'neer's idee o' honor is like. Thar was a family livin' on the other side o' the Ridge, not a great ways from hyeh, by the name o' Calvern, an' in some way or other--I never heard the rights of it--they took to shootin' up the Beaupoints every chance that come along. One day Dandie Beaupoint found a little girl that had hurt herself, an' he picked her up in his arms an' was carryin' her home when one o' the Calvern boys shot him in his tracks. One o' the Beaupoint brothers was away at the time, but the others felt that the Calverns hadn't b'n playin' fair, an' they reckoned to lay them all out. They did, too, all but one, an', although they had a chance to nail him, they let him alone."