Without looking, she felt the agony on the boy"s face as the stone descended. Without listening she heard him crumple in his seat as the rubber grip broke, springs flew and the barrel bent.
When there remained only an unrecognizable ma.s.s of broken and twisted steel, she walked slowly to the open window and dropped it out. Turning, she looked them all squarely in the eye (all but Bud, whose face was down on his desk) and said in her ordinary tune of voice:
"You may resume your lessons."
In one corner a fly, caught in a spider"s web, droned complainingly. From a nearby bush there came the liquid notes of a wild canary, while faint and from far away there came the low of a cow. Save for the occasional swish of a turned page, no other sound disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness of the school room. And, as Florence"s glance strayed to the hillside and sentinal rock, she saw that the silent watcher was gone.
Had Florence been able to open the book of the future and to read there an account of the far reaching events that were to come out of the moments that had just pa.s.sed, she would have been surprised and startled.
As she could not, she could only wonder, and in her heart there was a feeling of dread.
The hours that followed were filled with a strange, subdued silence. The careless rustle of pages was gone. Gone, too, was the uneasy shuffle of feet on the plain board floor. Children recited in tones little above a whisper. It was as if the room were empty; no children there. And yet, there they were. Florence saw them with her eyes, but when she closed her eyes she was subject to an illusion, a feeling that they had vanished.
When the last long hours had dragged its way to a weary end, the children crept silently away. On the soft soil their bare feet made no sound, and from their lips there came never a whisper.
Bud Wax was the last to leave and looking neither to right nor left, with his head upon his breast he disappeared at once in the shadows of a paw-paw thicket.
Marion had gone ahead with some of the younger children to help them across the river.
Florence remained behind. As the last child disappeared from sight, she left the schoolhouse to strike off up the leafy bank and on up the hillside until, quite out of breath from climbing, she threw herself upon a soft bed of ferns to bury her face in her hands and burst out crying.
As she lay there pressing her throbbing temples, it seemed to her that all worth while things in the world had pa.s.sed away. Being only a girl, she could not fathom the depth of emotion nor measure the flood tide of bitterness that flowed over her soul. She only knew that at last memory came to her rescue, the memory of an old, old story in the Bible of a man who, having won a marvelous victory over great odds, had gone far away into the wilderness to at last throw himself prostrate upon the ground and ask that he might die.
As the girl recalled the story she felt that she had much in common with this old prophet of Israel. The enemy of her school had tried to destroy it. She had defeated his end. How long she would remain victor she could not tell. She only knew that to-day she had won.
"And to-day," she a.s.sured herself stoutly, "is enough. Let to-morrow care for itself."
Then of a sudden she recalled a promise. She had told Jensie Crider, one of her most promising pupils, that she would come to her house and stay the night. She must be away at once.
An hour later found her on the shake roofed porch of a two room cabin far up on the side of Big Black Mountain. The light faded from the tallest, most distant peak as her tiny young hostess bade her shy welcome.
To one accustomed, as Florence was, to the homes of rich and fertile valleys, this mountain cabin seemed strangely meager. Two rooms, two beds, a table of pine boards, a fireplace hung with rows of red peppers and braids of onions, three splint bottomed chairs, a pile of home woven coverlids in the corner, a box cupboard nailed to the wall, a few dishes in the cupboard, that was all.
And yet it was scrupulously clean. The hearth had been brushed, the floor scrubbed and sanded, the coverlids on the beds were spotless and the few cheap stone dishes shone like imported china.
"It"s something that people from the outside don"t realize," Florence told herself. "Many of these mountain folks, living here shut off from the world, with few tools and many difficulties, would put to shame many of those whose opportunities have been great. Surely their children should have a chance! And they shall!" She clenched her hands tight as this thought pa.s.sed through her mind. She was thinking of the coming school election and of the things they would do if they won.
"If we win?" she whispered. "We will win! We will!"
One incident of the evening in that cabin remained long in her memory.
They were at supper. Since there were but four plates and four chairs, the two younger children must wait while Jensie ate with her teacher and the father and mother.
The meal was simple enough-corn bread baked on the hearth, fried string beans, a gla.s.s of wild cherry jelly and a plain cake with very little sugar. The luxury of the meal was a plate of boiled eggs. On the rich, broad-sweeping prairies, or in cities, one thinks of eggs as staple food.
In the mountains they are h.o.a.rded as a golden treasure, to be traded at the store for calico, shoes, and other necessities of life.
But this night, in honor of the guest, Jensie had served six shining white eggs. Florence saw the faces of the children glow with antic.i.p.ation.
"Probably haven"t had eggs for months," was her mental comment.
As she took her egg and cut it in two with her knife, it was like the breaking of bread in sacrament.
As the meal was eaten she watched the eager eyes of the two waiting children. Then, of a sudden, in the eyes of those little ones, a near tragedy occurred.
"Have another egg," said the hostess to Florence, pa.s.sing the plate as she did so.
Without thinking, she put out a hand to take one. Then, of a sudden, the youngest child threw herself flat on the floor while her little form shook with silent sobbing.
"No, I don"t think I care for another," Florence said quickly, drawing back her hand just in time.
At once, with face wreathed in smiles, the little one was on her feet.
"They do this for me," thought Florence, swallowing hard. "What must I not do for them?"
Nine o"clock found Florence safely tucked away in the bed which occupied a corner of the small living room. In the kitchen-living room slept her host and his good wife, while from above her there came an occasional rustle or thump that told plainer than words that the three children, having given up their bed to the teacher, had gone to sleep on the floor of the attic. Here was one more token of the unusual hospitality of these kindly mountain people.
The ceiling, at which the girl lay staring with sleepless eyes, was strange indeed. In some way Jeff Crider had obtained enough mill sawed boards to cover the rough hewn beams. Some way, too, he had obtained enough paint to cover the boards. Then, that he might produce a decorative effect, before the paint was dry he had held a smoking, globeless kerosene lamp close to the paint, and, moving about in ever widening circles, had painted there black roads that led round and round in endless ways to nowhere.
As the girl stared at this fantastic ceiling it seemed to her that these tracings should mean something, that they led to an important truth, a truth that she should know, and one of vast importance.
Then of a sudden it struck her all of a heap. This cabin had an attic.
Mrs. McAlpin"s whipsawed cabin must have one, too. There was no entrance from below. She was sure of that, but the attic was there all the same.
"Confederate gold," she whispered. "It must be hidden there."
So intense were her convictions on this subject that she found herself unable to sleep.
At last, having wrapped a homespun blanket about her, she stepped into the crisp air of the night.
The moon was just rising over Big Black Mountain. It was lighting up the scenes of another entrancing mystery, which Florence had stumbled upon a few days before.
"Who lives at the head of Laurel Branch?" she had asked Ransom Turner.
"I don"t rightly know."
"Don"t know!" she exclaimed.
"I reckon there ain"t n.o.body that rightly knows except them that lives there."
"But-but where did they come from?"
"Peers like there don"t n.o.body rightly know."
"How very strange!" she had exclaimed. "When did they come?"
"Mebby two years back. Came from somewhere away over back of Pine Mounting. Quarest people you most ever seed. One man half as big as a mounting, and no arm except one. Mighty onfriendly folks. Coupla men who went up thar huntin" got scared off. Quarest folks you most ever seed."
"Perhaps that"s where little Hallie came from."
"Might be. But if I was you I"d never go near thar."