You see
and know in your little heart. I want you to be a great man--only a good
man can ever be great."
And so for an hour she poured into his heart her faith in God and His
glory until He became the one power fixed forever in the child's
imagination.
VII
The Boy lost his skin but grew another and incidentally absorbed some
ideas he never forgot.
On the day he was able to put on his clothes, it poured down rain and
work in the fields was impossible. A sense of delicious joy filled him.
He worked because he had to, not because he liked it. He was too proud
to shirk, too brave to cry when every nerve and muscle of his little
body ached with mortal weariness, but he hated it.
The sun rose bright and warm and shone clear in the Southern sky next
morning before he was called. He climbed down the ladder from his loft
wondering what marvellous thing had happened that he should be sleeping
with the sun already high in the heavens.
"What's the matter, Ma?" he asked anxiously. "Why didn't you call me?"
"It's too wet to plow. Your father's going to chop wood in the clearing.
He wanted you to pile brush after him, but I asked him to let you off to
go fishing for me."
He ate breakfast with his heart beating a tattoo, rushed into the
garden, dug a gourd full of worms, drew his long cane rod from the
eaves of the cabin, and with old Boney trotting at his heels was soon on
his way to a deep pool in the bend of the creek.
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