" And together boy
and dog crept softly across the room and stole out of the cabin
door--out of the cabin door, into the beautiful light of the new day.
And the drunken brute still slept on the floor by the open fire-place,
but the fire was dead upon the hearth.
"He can't hurt maw any more, Smoke," said the lad, when the two were
at a safe distance. "No, he sure can't lick her agin, an' me an' you
kin rustle fer ourselves, I reckon."
* * * * *
Sixteen years later, in the early gray of another morning, a young man
crawled from beneath a stack of straw on the outskirts of Boyd City,
a busy, bustling mining town of some fifteen thousand people, in one
of the middle western states, many miles from the rude cabin that stood
beneath the hill.
The night before, he had approached the town from the east, along the
road that leads past Mount Olive, and hungry, cold and weary, had
sought shelter of the friendly stack, much preferring a bed of straw
and the companionship of cattle to any lodging place he might find in
the city, less clean and among a ruder company.
It was early March and the smoke from a nearby block of smelters was
lost in a chilling mist, while a raw wind made the young man shiver
as he stood picking the bits of straw from his clothing. When he had
brushed his garments as best he could and had stretched his numb and
stiffened limbs, he looked long and thoughtfully at the city lying
half hidden in its shroud of gray.
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