“Hit’s impossible, Ma’am, because when I make up my mind to a thing it’s impossible to change it.”
She sat looking at him curiously. Never in all her life had she seen a personality more powerful than that of this half-wild heathen who stood before her. The feel of the iron of his soul came upon her with strange effect.
“I’ll not ask you why you’re going outside,” said she, after a moment.
“Jest because ye don’t ax me, I’ll tell ye,” said Joslin suddenly. “I’m a-goin’ outside to git a education.”
“An education? There aren’t many schools back in there?”
“Thar hain’t no schools at all, Ma’am. My daddy war a preacher afore he died. I kain’t read in no book to amount to nothin’. I kain’t hardly write my own name. I’m a-goin’ outside to git a education, because I’m a-goin’ to build a college, Ma’am.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’ve got to do it. My people have been a-killin’ each other in thar fer a hundred years. They kain’t read, they kain’t write, they kain’t think. They hain’t amountin’ to nothin’ whatever in the world. They’re a great people, Ma’am. They’re worth savin’. Well, it kind of come to me, in a sort of callin’, that I’d orter save them. So, like I said, I’m a-goin’ Outside to git me a education, soon as I kin.”
The situation had suddenly become extraordinary. They waited for the mountaineer to go on, as presently he did.
“I’ve nuvver been further down the river than a couple of locks below. I’ve rafted here sence I was fourteen year old, but beyant the aidge of the hills I don’t know nothin’ of the world. Kin ye tell me whar I kin git my education? I don’t reckon it’ll take long—us mounting people larn right fast, Ma’am, when we git a chancet.”
Then, after a pause, he went on, anxiously: “I’d do arything in the world to obleege ye, Ma’am—I’d go back in thar right now with ye if I had time. But ye see, I’m twenty-eight year old, an’ I hain’t got no time to lose.”
Marcia Haddon sat in silence for a time and looked at her husband, who, moody and irritated, was flicking at the end of his cigar.
“This is rather an extraordinary thing, Jim,” said she. “Do you suppose—is there any way we could help this man?”
“He doesn’t seem any too willing to help us,” replied Haddon grimly.
“I hain’t said that, Mister,” said Joslin evenly. “I’d do arything in the world I could fer ye people if it was right.”