“No,” he replied, “I don't seem to have a knife.”
“Well,” said the little boy, “you can git one when you go to git your hat.”
The man walked on by the ox's shoulder, and the child continued to talk. There were difficulties to be met. The store was very far away, and one required money to obtain its treasures. The getting of money was a very troublesome affair. But he knew a way or two by which the thing could be accomplished. One could gather hickory nuts or one could dig ginseng. The latter method was to be advised--a pound brought a dollar and seventeen cents. But it must be dried. One strung it on a string and hung it over the fireplace. The storekeeper would not take it green.
He spoke a word of comment concerning the storekeeper.
He was hard to fool. He always broke the ginseng roots to see if there was a nail concealed inside. The child knew a man who had outwitted the storekeeper once by putting shot in the ends of the root, leaving the middle unmolested; but, he added, that was “no way to do.”
The road on this side of the mountain was steep. The turns short. The little party soon reached the foot, and came out into a valley, cleared and sowed in timothy grass. Through this valley, between sodded banks, ran a dark-colored, swiftly flowing stream.
The road followed the stream through the meadow until it approached the mill. There the stream descended swiftly over ridges of sandstone into a dam of ancient logs. The mill sat beside the road, its roof projecting, its porch raised above the ground, its door and its gable open, its entrance coated with white dust.
The machinery was of the simplest, two stone burrs turned by a paddle wheel; the water carried down from the dam in a boxed sluice, covered with green moss.
There was a second door to one-half of it, also opening on the porch, and through the open door one could see a stove, a bed, a well-scrubbed table.
As the man leading the red ox approached, a woman appeared in the mill door. She was a sturdy woman of middle life, her calico dress pulled up in front and girded around her ample waist with an apron string. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and her fat, powerful hands rested on her hips. Her mouth was compressed, the muscles of her jaws protruded, her bright gray eyes rested on the strange man with a profound, unmoved scrutiny. When the ox stood beside the porch, the man spoke.