Louisa May Alcott - "An Old fashioned Girl"

Dillon Wallace - "The Long Labrador Trail"

John Milton - "Poemata (William Cowper, trans.)"

Flavius Josephus - "The Life of Flavius Josephus"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Heart Of The Hills

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Heart Of The Hills




"Don't you say nothin' agin him, now," he said, and old Jason
laughed.

"He's a powerful hand to take up fer his friends, Jason is."

"He was a friend o' all us mountain folks," said the boy stoutly,
and then he looked Colonel Pendleton in the face--fearlessly, but
with no impertinence.

"He said as how you folks from the big settlemints was a-comin'
down here to buy up our wild lands fer nothin' because we all was
a lot o' fools an' didn't know how much they was worth, an' that
ever'body'd have to move out o' here an' you'd get rich diggin'
our coal an' cuttin' our timber an' raisin' hell ginerally."

He did not notice Marjorie's flush, but went on fierily: "He said
that our trees caught the rain an' our gullies gethered it
together an' troughed it down the mountains an' made the river
which would water all yo' lands. That you was a lot o' damn fools
cuttin' down yo' trees an' a-plantin' terbaccer an' a-spittin' out
yo' birthright in terbaccer-juice, an' that by an' by you'd come
up here an' cut down our trees so that there wouldn't be nothin'
left to ketch the rain when it fell, so that yo' rivers would git
to be cricks an' yo' cricks branches an' yo' land would die o'
thirst an' the same thing 'ud happen here. Co'se we'd all be gone
when all this tuk place, but he said as how I'd live to see the
day when you furriners would be damaged by wash-outs down thar in
the settlements an' would be a-pilin' up stacks an' stacks o' gold
out o' the lands you robbed me an' my kinfolks out of."

"Shet up," said Arch Hawn sharply, and the boy wheeled on him.

"Yes, an' you air a-helpin' the furriners to rob yo' own kin; you
air a-doin' hit yo'self."

"Jason!"

The old man spoke sternly and the boy stopped, flushed and angry,
and a moment later slipped from the room.

"Well!" said the colonel, and he laughed good-humoredly to relieve
the strain that his host might feel on his account; but he was
amazed just the same--the bud of a socialist blooming in those
wilds! Arch Hawn's shrewd face looked a little concerned, for he
saw that the old man's rebuke had been for the discourtesy to
strangers, and from the sudden frown that ridged the old man's
brow, that the boy's words had gone deep enough to stir distrust,
and this was a poor start in the fulfilment of the purpose he had
in view. He would have liked to give the boy a cuff on the ear. As
for Mavis, she was almost frightened by the outburst of her
playmate, and Marjorie was horrified by his profanity; but the
dawning of something in Gray's brain worried him, and presently
he, too, rose and went to the back porch. The rain had stopped,
the wet earth was fragrant with freshened odors, wood-thrushes
were singing, and the upper air was drenched with liquid gold that
was darkening fast. The boy Jason was seated on the yard fence
with his chin in his hands, his back to the house, and his face
toward home. He heard the stranger's step, turned his head, and
mistaking a puzzled sympathy for a challenge, dropped to the
ground and came toward him, gathering fury as he came. Like
lightning the Blue-grass lad's face changed, whitening a little as
he sprang forward to meet him, but Jason, motioning with his
thumb, swerved behind the chimney, where the stranger swiftly
threw off his coat, the mountain boy spat on his hands, and like
two diminutive demons they went at each other fiercely and
silently. A few minutes later the two little girls rounding the
chimney corner saw them--Gray on top and Jason writhing and biting
under him like a tortured snake. A moment more Mavis's strong
little hand had the stranger boy by his thick hair and Mavis,
feeling her own arm clutched by the stranger-girl, let go and
turned on her like a fury. There was a piercing scream from
Marjorie, hurried footsteps answered on the porch, and old Jason
and the colonel looked with bewildered eyes on the little Blue-
grass girl amazed, indignant, white with horror; Mavis shrinking
away from her as though she were the one who had been threatened
with a blow; the stranger lad with a bitten thumb clinched in the
hollow of one hand, his face already reddening with contrition and
shame; and savage little Jason biting a bloody lip and with the
lust of battle still shaking him from head to foot.

"Jason," said the old man sternly, "whut's the matter out hyeh?"

Marjorie pointed one finger at Mavis, started to speak, and
stopped. Jason's eyes fell.

"Nothin'," he said sullenly, and Colonel Pendleton looked to his
son with astonished inquiry, and the lad's fine face turned
bewildered and foolish.

"I don't know, sir," he said at last.

"Don't know?" echoed the colonel. "Well--"

The old man broke in:

"Jason, if you have lost yo' manners an' don't know how to behave
when thar's strangers around, I reckon you'd better go on home."

The boy did not lift his eyes.

"I was a-goin' home anyhow," he said, still sullen, and he turned.

"Oh, no!" said the colonel quickly; "this won't do. Come now--you
two boys shake hands."

At once the stranger lad walked forward to his enemy, and confused
Jason gave him a limp hand. The old man laughed. "Come on in,
Jason--you an' Mavis--an' stay to supper."

The boy shook his head.

"I got to be gittin' back home," he said, and without a word more
he turned again. Marjorie looked toward the little girl, but she,
too, was starting.

"I better be gittin' back too," she said shyly, and off she ran.
Old Jason laughed again.

"Jes' like two young roosters out thar in my barnyard," and he
turned with the colonel toward the house. But Marjorie and her
cousin stood in the porch and watched the two little mountaineers
until, without once looking back, they passed over the sunlit
hill.




IV

On they trudged, the boy plodding sturdily ahead, the little girl
slipping mountain-fashion behind. Not once did she come abreast
with him, and not one word did either say, but the mind and heart
of both were busy. All the way the frown over-casting the boy's
face stayed like a shadow, for he had left trouble at home, he had
met trouble, and to trouble he was going back. The old was
definite enough and he knew how to handle it, but the new bothered
him sorely. That stranger boy was a fighter, and Jason's honest
soul told him that if interference had not come he would have been
whipped, and his pride was still smarting with every step. The new
boy had not tried to bite, or gouge, or to hit him when he was on
top--facts that puzzled the mountain boy; he hadn't whimpered and
he hadn't blabbed--not even the insult Jason had hurled with eye
and tongue at his girl-clad legs. He had said that he didn't know
what they were fighting about, and just why they were Jason
himself couldn't quite make out now; but he knew that even now, in
spite of the hand-shaking truce, he would at the snap of a finger
go at the stranger again. And little Mavis knew now that it was
not fear that made the stranger girl scream--and she, too, was
puzzled. She even felt that the scorn in Marjorie's face was not
personal, but she had shrunk from it as from the sudden lash of a
whip. The stranger girl, too, had not blabbed but had even seemed
to smile her forgiveness when Mavis turned, with no good-by, to
follow Jason. Hand in hand the two little mountaineers had crossed
the threshold of a new world that day. Together they were going
back into their own, but the clutch of the new was tight on both,
and while neither could have explained, there was the same thought
in each mind, the same nameless dissatisfaction in each heart, and
both were in the throes of the same new birth.

The sun was sinking when they started up the spur, and
unconsciously Jason hurried his steps and the girl followed hard.
The twin spirals of smoke were visible now, and where the path
forked the boy stopped and turned, jerking his thumb toward her
cabin and his.

"Ef anything happens"--he paused, and the girl nodded her
understanding--"you an' me air goin' to stay hyeh in the mountains
an' git married."

"Yes, Jasie," she said.

His tone was matter-of-fact and so was hers, nor did she show any
surprise at the suddenness of what he said, and Jason, not looking
at her, failed to see a faint flush come to her cheek. He turned
to go, but she stood still, looking down into the gloomy,
darkening ravine below her. A bear's tracks had been found in that
ravine only the day before. "Air ye afeerd?" he asked tolerantly,
and she nodded mutely.

"I'll take ye down," he said with sudden gentleness.

The tall mountaineer was standing on the porch of the cabin, and
with assurance and dignity Jason strode ahead with a protecting
air to the gate.

"Whar you two been?" he called sharply.

"I went fishin'," said the boy unperturbed, "an' tuk Mavis with
me."

"You air gittin' a leetle too peart, boy. I don't want that gal a-
runnin' around in the woods all day."

Jason met his angry eyes with a new spirit.

"I reckon you hain't been hyeh long."

The shot went home and the mountaineer glared helpless for an
answer.

"Come on in hyeh an' git supper," he called harshly to the girl,
and as the boy went back up the spur, he could hear the scolding
going on below, with no answer from Mavis, and he made up his mind
to put an end to that some day himself. He knew what was waiting
for him on the other side of the spur, and when he reached the
top, he sat down for a moment on a long-fallen, moss-grown log.
Above him beetled the top of his world. His great blue misty hills
washed their turbulent waves to the yellow shore of the dropping
sun. Those waves of forests primeval were his, and the green spray
of them was tossed into cloudland to catch the blessed rain. In
every little fold of them drops were trickling down now to water
the earth and give back the sea its own. The dreamy-eyed man of
science had told him that. And it was unchanged, all unchanged
since wild beasts were the only tenants, since wild Indians
slipped through the wilderness aisles, since the half-wild white
man, hot on the chase, planted his feet in the footsteps of both
and inexorably pushed them on. The boy's first Kentucky ancestor
had been one of those who had stopped in the hills. His rifle had
fed him and his family; his axe had put a roof over their heads,
and the loom and spinning-wheel had clothed their bodies. Day by
day they had fought back the wilderness, had husbanded the soil,
and as far as his eagle eye could reach, that first Hawn had
claimed mountain, river, and tree for his own, and there was none
to dispute the claim for the passing of half a century. Now those
who had passed on were coming back again--the first trespasser
long, long ago with a yellow document that he called a "blanket-
patent" and which was all but the bringer's funeral shroud, for
the old hunter started at once for his gun and the stranger with
his patent took to flight. Years later a band of young men with
chain and compass had appeared in the hills and disappeared as
suddenly, and later still another band, running a line for a
railroad up the river, found old Jason at the foot of a certain
oak with his rifle in the hollow of his arm and marking a dead-
line which none dared to cross.

Later still, when he understood, the old man let them pass, but so
far nobody had surveyed his land, and now, instead of trying to
take, they were trying to purchase. From all points of the compass
the "furriners" were coming now, the rock-pecker's prophecy was
falling true, and at that moment the boy's hot words were having
an effect on every soul who had heard them. Old Jason's suspicions
were alive again; he was short of speech when his nephew, Arch
Hawn, brought up the sale of his lands, and Arch warned the
colonel to drop the subject for the night. The colonel's mind had
gone back to a beautiful woodland at home that he thought of
clearing off for tobacco--he would put that desecration off a
while. The stranger boy, too, was wondering vaguely at the fierce
arraignment he had heard; the stranger girl was curiously haunted
by memories of the queer little mountaineer, while Mavis now had a
new awe of her cousin that was but another rod with which he could
go on ruling her.

Jason's mother was standing in the door when he walked through the
yard gate. She went back into the cabin when she saw him coming,
and met him at the door with a switch in her hand. Very coolly the
lad caught it from her, broke it in two, threw it away, and
picking up a piggin went out without a word to milk, leaving her
aghast and outdone. When he came back, he asked like a man if
supper was ready, and as to a man she answered. For an hour he
pottered around the barn, and for a long while he sat on the porch
under the stars. And, as always at that hour, the same scene
obsessed his memory, when the last glance of his father's eye and
the last words of his father's tongue went not to his wife, but to
the white-faced little son across the foot of the death-bed:

"You'll git him fer me--some day."

"I'll git him, pap."

Those were the words that passed, and in them was neither the
asking nor the giving of a promise, but a simple statement and a
simple acceptance of a simple trust, and the father passed with a
grim smile of content. Like every Hawn the boy believed that a
Honeycutt was the assassin, and in the solemn little fellow one
purpose hitherto had been supreme--to discover the man and avenge
the deed; and though, young as he was, he was yet too cunning to
let the fact be known, there was no male of the name old enough to
pull the trigger, not even his mother's brother, Babe, who did not
fall under the ban of the boy's deathless hate and suspicion. And
always his mother, though herself a Honeycutt, had steadily fed
his purpose, but for a long while now she had kept disloyally
still, and the boy had bitterly learned the reason.

It was bedtime now, and little Jason rose and went within. As he
climbed the steps leading to his loft, he spoke at last, nodding
his head toward the cabin over the spur:

"I reckon I know whut you two are up to, and, furhermore, you are
aimin' to sell this land. I can't keep you from doin' it, I
reckon, but I do ask you not to sell without lettin' me know. I
know somet'n' 'bout it that nobody else knows. An' if you don't
tell me--" he shook his head slowly, and the mother looked at her
boy as though she were dazed by some spell.

"I'll tell ye, Jasie," she said.




V

Down the river road loped Arch Hawn the next morning, his square
chin low with thought, his shrewd eyes almost closed, and his
straight lips closed hard on the cane stem of an unlighted pipe.
Of all the Hawns he had been born the poorest in goods and
chattels and the richest in shrewd resource, restless energy, and
keen foresight. He had gone to the settlements when he was a lad,
he had always been coming and going ever since, and the word was
that he had been to far-away cities in the outer world that were
as unfamiliar to his fellows and kindred as the Holy Land. He had
worked as teamster and had bought and sold anything to anybody
right and left. Resolutely he had kept himself from all part in
the feud--his kinship with the Hawns protecting him on one side
and the many trades with old Aaron Honeycutt in cattle and lands
saving him from trouble on the other. He carried no tales from one
faction to the other, condemned neither one nor the other, and
made the same comment to both--that it was foolish to fight when
there was so much else so much more profitable to do. Once an
armed band of mounted Honeycutts had met him in the road and
demanded news of a similar band of Hawns up a creek. "Did you ever
hear o' my tellin' the Hawns anything about you Honeycutts?" he
asked quietly, and old Aaron had to shake his head.

"Well, if I tol' you anything about them to-day, don't you know
I'd be tellin' them something about you to-morrow?"

Old Aaron scratched his head.

"By Gawd, boys--that's so. Let him pass!"

Thus it was that only Arch Hawn could have brought about an
agreement that was the ninth wonder of the mountain world, and was
no less than a temporary truce in the feud between old Aaron
Honeycutt and old Jason Hawn until the land deal in which both
leaders shared a heavy interest could come to a consummation. Arch
had interested Colonel Pendleton in his "wild lands" at a horse
sale in the Blue-grass. The mountaineer's shrewd knowledge of
horses had caught the attention of the colonel, his drawling
speech, odd phrasing, and quaint humor had amused the Blue-grass
man, and his exposition of the wealth of the hills and the vast
holdings that he had in the hollow of his hand, through options
far and wide, had done the rest--for the matter was timely to the
colonel's needs and to his accidental hour of opportunity. Only a
short while before old Morton Sanders, an Eastern capitalist of
Kentucky birth, had been making inquiry of him that the
mountaineer's talk answered precisely, and soon the colonel found
himself an intermediary between buried coal and open millions, and
such a quick unlooked-for chance of exchange made Arch Hawn's
brain reel. Only a few days before the colonel started for the
mountains, Babe Honeycutt had broken the truce by shooting Shade
Hawn, but as Shade was going to get well, Arch's oily tongue had
licked the wound to the pride of every Honeycutt except Shade, and
he calculated that the latter would be so long in bed that his
interference would never count. But things were going wrong. Arch
had had a hard time with old Jason the night before. Again he had
to go over the same weary argument that he had so often travelled
before: the mountain people could do nothing with the mineral
wealth of their hills; the coal was of no value to them where it
was; they could not dig it, they had no market for it; and they
could never get it into the markets of the outside world. It was
the boy's talk that had halted the old man, and to Arch's
amazement the colonel's sense of fairness seemed to have been
touched and his enthusiasm seemed to have waned a little. That
morning, too, Arch had heard that Shade Hawn was getting well a
little too fast, and he was on his way to see about it. Shade was
getting well fast, and with troubled eyes Arch saw him sitting up
in a chair and cleaning his Winchester.

"What's yo' hurry?"

"I ain't never agreed to no truce," said Shade truculently.

"Don't you think you might save a little time--waitin' fer Babe to
git tame? He's hidin' out. You can't find him now."

"I can look fer him."

"Shade!"--wily Arch purposely spoke loud enough for Shade's wife
to hear, and he saw her thin, worn, shrewish face turn eagerly--
"I'll give ye just fifty dollars to stay here in the house an' git
well fer two more weeks. You know why, an' you know hit's wuth it
to me. What you say?"

Shade rubbed his stubbled chin ruminatively and his wife Mandy
broke in sharply:

"Take it, you fool!"

Apparently Shade paid no heed to the advice nor the epithet, which
was not meant to be offensive, but he knew that Mandy wanted a cow
of just that price and a cow she would have; while he needed
cartridges and other little "fixin's," and he owed for moonshine
up a certain creek, and wanted more just then and badly. But
mental calculation was laborious and he made a plunge:

"Not a cent less'n seventy-five, an' I ain't goin' to argue with
ye."

Arch scowled.

"Split the difference!" he commanded.

"All right."

A few minutes later Arch was loping back up the river road. Within
an hour he had won old Jason to a non-committal silence and
straight-way volunteered to show the colonel the outcroppings of
his coal. And old Jason mounted his sorrel mare and rode with the
party up the creek.

It was Sunday and a holiday for little Jason from toil in the
rocky corn-field. He was stirring busily before the break of dawn.
While the light was still gray, he had milked, cut wood for his
mother, and eaten his breakfast of greasy bacon and corn-bread. On
that day it had been his habit for months to disappear early, come
back for his dinner, slip quietly away again and return worn out
and tired at milking-time. Invariably for a long time his mother
had asked:

"Whut you been a-doin', Jason?" And invariably his answer was:

"Nothin' much."

But, by and by, as the long dark mountaineer, Steve Hawn, got in
the daily habit of swinging over the ridge, she was glad to be
free from the boy's sullen watchfulness, and particularly that
morning she was glad to see him start as usual up the path his own
feet had worn through the steep field of corn, and disappear in
the edge of the woods. She would have a long day for courtship and
for talk of plans which she was keeping secret from little Jason.
She was a Honeycutt and she had married one Hawn, and there had
been much trouble. Now she was going to marry another of the
tribe, there would be more trouble, and Steve Hawn over the ridge
meant to evade it by straightway putting forth from those hills.
Hurriedly she washed the dishes, tidied up her poor shack of a
home, and within an hour she was seated in the porch, in her best
dress, with her knitting in her lap and, even that early, lifting
expectant and shining eyes now and then to the tree-crowned crest
of the ridge.

Up little Jason went through breaking mist and flashing dew. A
wood-thrush sang, and he knew the song came from the bird of which
little Mavis was the human counterpart. Woodpeckers were hammering
and, when a crested cock of the woods took billowy flight across a
blue ravine, he knew him for a big cousin of the little red-heads,
just as Mavis was a little cousin of his. Once he had known birds
only by sight, but now he knew every calling, twittering, winging
soul of them by name. Once he used to draw bead on one and all
heartlessly and indiscriminately with his old rifle, but now only
the whistle of a bob-white, the darting of a hawk, or the whir of
a pheasant's wings made him whirl the old weapon from his
shoulder. He knew flower, plant, bush, and weed, the bark and leaf
of every tree, and even In winter he could pick them out in the
gray etching of a mountain-side--dog-wood, red-bud, "sarvice"
berry, hickory, and walnut, the oaks--white, black, and chestnut--
the majestic poplar, prized by the outer world, and the black-gum
that defied the lightning. All this the dreamy stranger had taught
him, and much more. And nobody, native born to those hills, except
his uncle Arch, knew as much about their hidden treasures as
little Jason. He had trailed after the man of science along the
benches of the mountains where coal beds lie. With him he had
sought the roots of upturned trees and the beds of little creeks
and the gray faces of "rock-houses" for signs of the black
diamonds. He had learned to watch the beds of little creeks for
the shining tell-tale black bits, and even the tiny mouths of
crawfish holes, on the lips of which they sometimes lay. And the
biggest treasure in the hills little Jason had found himself; for
only on the last day before the rock-pecker had gone away, the two
had found signs of another vein, and the geologist had given his
own pick to the boy and told him to dig, while he was gone, for
himself. And Jason had dug. He was slipping now up the tiny
branch, and where the stream trickled down the face of a water-
worn perpendicular rock the boy stopped, leaned his rifle against
a tree, and stepped aside into the bushes. A moment later he
reappeared with a small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound
of loose rocks and loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and
entered the narrow mouth of a deep, freshly dug ditch. Ten feet
farther on he was halted by a tall black column solidly wedged in
the narrow passage, at the base of which was a bench of yellow
dirt extending not more than two feet from the foot of the column
and above the floor of the ditch. There had been mighty operations
going on in that secret passage; the toil for one boy and one tool
had been prodigious and his work was not yet quite done. Lifting
the pick above his head, the boy sank it into that yellow pedestal
with savage energy, raking the loose earth behind him with hands
and feet. The sunlight caught the top of the black column above
his head and dropped shining inch by inch, but on he worked
tirelessly. The yellow bench disappeared and the heap of dirt
behind him was piled high as his head, but the black column bored
on downward as though bound for the very bowels of the earth, and
only when the bench vanished to the level of the ditch's floor did
the lad send his pick deep into a new layer and lean back to rest
even for a moment. A few deep breaths, the brushing of one forearm
and then the other across his forehead and cheeks, and again he
grasped the tool. This time it came out hard, bringing out with
its point particles of grayish-black earth, and the boy gave a
low, shrill yell. It was a bed of clay that he had struck--the bed
on which, as the geologist had told him, the massive layers of
coal had slept so long. In a few minutes he had skimmed a yellow
inch or two more to the dingy floor of the clay bed, and had
driven his pick under the very edge of the black bulk towering
above him.