204 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



than what I be, an' she knowed. Yes, sir, she 

 knowed!" 



Once, two or three years ago, when the win- 

 ter snows were too heavy to let her do much 

 work in the woods, she was pretty hard put to 

 it for a time. She used then to come down to 

 Happy Hollow in the mornings to get a little 

 milk. She wouldn't take it as a gift, and we 

 had learned to know her fine pride too well to 

 insist upon it. She kept tally some way; and 

 then one morning when a mild spell had set in 

 she appeared with her ax over her shoulder. 



"I come to pay for that thar milk you-all 

 been lettin' me hev," she said. "Hit don't do 

 for folks not to pay for what they git, jest be- 

 cause they're pore." Nothing would do but 

 that she must spend the long morning on our 

 woodpile. What could we say? We let her do 

 as she wanted. She's a brave old soul! Her 

 whole life has been stripped down to the bare 

 bones of hard need, with never a moment's 

 hand-grip on even the least of life's advan- 

 tages. In all her years she has never read a 

 word nor seen with her own eyes anything that 

 lies beyond the rim of the hills that shut our 

 neighborhood in. What she knows of Holy 

 Writ has come to her obscurely in roundabout 



