CHAPTER IV 



FIRST VISITS FROM HOME 



THERE were certain experiences of my life between my four- 

 teenth and eighteenth years which have not found their place in 

 this story, but deserve telling, for they had their share in my 

 shaping. Up to the age of fourteen I was kept within a narrow 

 range of country, not wandering further away than twenty 

 miles from my birthplace; the farthest, to certain large farms 

 belonging to my grandfather about that distance up the Licking 

 River, which were in charge of a kinsman by the name of Hinde, 

 a large, simple-minded man, the type of the English squire. 

 There I fell in with a more primitive folk than dwelt in and near 

 the town, people essentially like those who were later discovered 

 by literary folk in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and 

 Tennessee and the adjacent parts of Virginia and the Carolinas. 

 With them I learned the arts of the hunter. Deer were still to be 

 found and wild turkeys were abundant. The men had the skill 

 of the frontiersman and his traditions in tracking game. Two 

 of these rustics stay in my mind : one was a gray-haired old man 

 who had an amazing skill with the rifle then in use, the long, 

 heavy-barrelled piece with a bore so small that a hundred or so 

 spliced bullets were had from a pound of lead. As for shot-guns, 

 he despised them utterly. I remember that when a friend of 

 mine joined our hunting party armed with a double-barrelled 

 fowling-piece, this ancient hunter, after examining it carefully, 

 said, " Stranger, you ain't a-going to tote that ar thing with us ; 

 there's no knowing what it '11 do." 



Among the lads near my age, was one of sixteen years who 

 was a really marvellous shot, especially at wild turkeys on the 

 wing, very difficult birds to hit with a rifle-ball. One day we 

 started a flock in a wood where in their flight they were only 



