"Tell ye, Cornely, this thing o' windin' yer heart-strings around and
around a passel o' chaps for a year or so and then havin' 'em tore
out--well, hit takes a mighty considerable chunk o' yer heart along with
'em." And the wife, looking at him with wet eyes, nodded an assent.
It was next May that Pap Overholt, who had been doing some hauling over as
far as Big Turkey Track, returned one evening with a little figure perched
beside him on the high wagon seat. "The Lord sent him, honey," he said, and
handed the child down to his wife. "He ain't got a livin' soul on this
earth to lay claim to him. He is ourn as much as ef he was flesh and bone
of us. I even tuck out the papers."
That evening, the two sitting watching the little dark face in its sleep,
Pap told his story. Driving across the flank of Yellow Old Bald, beyond
Lost Cabin, he had passed a woman with five children sitting beside the
road in Big Buck Gap.
"Cornely, she looked like a picture out of a book," whispered Pap. "This
chap's the livin' image of her. Portugee blood--touch o' that melungeon
tribe from over in the Fur Cove. She had a little smooth face shaped like a
aig; that curly hair hangin' clean to her waist, dark like this baby's, but
with the sun all through it; these eyebrows o' his'n that's lifted in the
middle o' his forred, like he cain't see why some onkindness was did him;
and little slim hands and feet; all mighty furrin to the mountains.
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