She sighed as she
looked after them.
Feet--of what use were feet to follow such a flight as that?
CHAPTER V
THE MOCCASIN FLOWER
Johnnie was used to hardship and early rising, but in an intermittent
fashion; for the Passmores and Consadines were a haggard lot that came
to no lure but their own pleasure. They might--and often did--go hungry,
ill-clad, ill-housed; they might sometimes--in order to keep soul and
body together--have to labour desperately at rude tasks unsuited to
them; but these times were exceptions, and between such seasons, down to
the least of the tribe, they had always followed the Vision, pursuing
the flying skirts of whatever ideal was in their shapely heads. The
little cabin in the gash of the hills owned for domain a rocky ravine
that was the standing jest of the mountain-side.
"Sure, hit's good land--fine land," the mountaineers would comment with
their inveterate, dry, lazy humour. "Nothing on earth to hender a man
from raisin' a crap off 'n it--ef he could once git the leathers on a
good stout, willin' pa'r o' hawks or buzzards, an' a plough hitched to
'em." And Johnnie could remember the other children teasing her and
saying that her folks had to load a gun with seed corn and shoot it into
the sky to reach their fields. Yet, the unmended roof covered much joy
and good feeling.
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