Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER I
Where the trail bent over a knoll, Zeke halted, and put down from his shoulder the hickory cudgel with its dangling valise of black oilcloth--total of baggage with which he was faring forth into the world. Then, he straightened himself, and looked back over the way he had come.
There, to the east, the dusk of night still lay somberly, hardly touched by the coming dawn. Through the shadows, the mountain masses loomed formidable and mysterious, vaguely outlined against the deeper gloom of valleys. The melancholy of the scene seemed a fit setting for the cottage that rested invisible within the forest, a half-mile distant from him. In imagination, he saw the withered old woman, his mother, still standing on the threshold, looking toward him, even as he looked toward her, her heart warm with love, her every thought a prayer for his happiness. It was borne in on Zeke once again that she would be very lonely in her desolate home, where death had spared to her

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