`` 'Tis what ye've a right to, Davy,'' said Polly Ann, and she handed me a little buckskin bag on which she had been sewing.I opened it with trembling fingers, and poured out, chinking on the table, such a motley collection of coins as was never seen,--Spanish milled dollars, English sovereigns and crowns and shillings, paper issues of the Confederacy, and I know not what else.Tom looked on with a grin, while little Tom and Peggy reached out their hands in delight, their mother vigorously blocking their intentions.
``Ye've earned it yerself,'' said Polly Ann, forestalling my protest; `` 'tis what ye got by the mill, and I've laid it by bit by bit for yer eddication.''
``And what do you get?'' I cried, striving by feigned anger to keep the tears back from my eyes.``Have you no family to support?''
``Faith,'' she answered, ``we have the mill that ye gave us, and the farm, and Tom's rifle.I reckon we'll fare better than ye think, tho' we'll miss ye sore about the place.''
I picked out two sovereigns from the heap, dropped them in the bag, and thrust it into my hunting shirt.
``There,'' said I, my voice having no great steadiness, ``not a penny more.I'll keep the bag for your sake, Polly Ann, and I'll take the mare for Tom's.''
She had had a song on her lips ever since our coming back from Danville, seven days agone, a song on her lips and banter on her tongue, as she made me a new hunting shirt and breeches for the journey across the mountains.
And now with a sudden movement she burst into tears and flung her arms about my neck.
``Oh, Davy, 'tis no time to be stubborn,'' she sobbed, ``and eddication is a costly thing.Ever sence I found ye on the trace, years ago, I've thought of ye one day as a great man.And when ye come back to us so big and l'arned, I'd wish to be saying with pride that I helped ye.''
``And who else, Polly Ann?'' I faltered, my heart racked with the parting.``You found me a homeless waif, and you gave me a home and a father and mother.''
``Davy, ye'll not forget us when ye're great, I know ye'll not.Tis not in ye.''
She stood back and smiled at me through her tears.
The light of heaven was in that smile, and I have dreamed of it even since age has crept upon me.Truly, God sets his own mark on the pure in heart, on the unselfish.
I glanced for the last time around the rude cabin, every timber of which was dedicated to our sacrifices and our love: the fireplace with its rough stones, on the pegs the quaint butternut garments which Polly Ann had stitched, the baby in his bark cradle, the rough bedstead and the little trundle pushed under it,--and the very homely odor of the place is dear to me yet.Despite the rigors and the dangers of my life here, should I ever again find such happiness and peace in the world? The children clung to my knees; and with a ``God bless ye, Davy, and come back to us,'' Tom squeezed my hand until I winced with pain.I leaped on the mare, and with blinded eyes rode down the familiar trail, past the mill, to Harrodsburg.
There Mr.Neville Colfax was waiting to take me across the mountains.
There is a story in every man's life, like the kernel in the shell of a hickory nut.I am ill acquainted with the arts of a biographer, but I seek to give in these pages little of the shell and the whole of the kernel of mine.