The Doctor hesitated. He shrank from
sending the lad out into the world. He foolishly could not bear the
thought of that splendid nature coming in touch with the filth of life as
he knew it. "You can see," he argued gruffly, "what it has done for me."
But Sammy answered, "Why, Doctor, what is the boy for?" And Young Matt,
looking away over Garber where an express train thundered over the
trestles and around the curves, said in his slow way, "The brush is about
all cleared, Doctor. The wilderness is going fast. The boy must live in
his own age and do his own work." When their friend urged that they
develop or sell the mine in the cave on Dewey Bald, and go with the boy,
they both shook their heads emphatically, saying, "No, Doctor, we belong
to the hills."
When the boy finally left his mountain home for a school in the distant
city, he had grown to be a man to fill the heart of every lover of his
race with pride. With his father's powerful frame and close-knit muscles,
and the healthy life of the woods and hills leaping in his veins, his
splendid body and physical strength were refined and dominated by the
mind and spirit of his mother. His shaggy, red-brown hair was like his
father's but his eyes were his mother's eyes, with that same trick of
expression, that wide questioning gaze, that seemed to demand every vital
truth in whatever came under his consideration. He had, too, his mother's
quick way of grasping your thoughts almost before you yourself were fully
conscious of them, with that same saving sense of humor that made Sammy
Lane the life and sunshine of the countryside.
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