As Gracie was silent and timid when any stranger was near, so
diffident that when on their way home from church she walked far away
from Alvin, the neighbors for a long while had no explanation for
Alvin's squirrel-hunts along the base of the mountain instead of up
toward the top of it; and Mrs. Williams, at her home, heard so many
gunshots off in the woods in the course of a day that she attached no
significance to them.
But Alvin's and Gracie's meetings along the shaded roadway that leads to
the Williams home were discovered, and Mrs. Williams put a ban upon
them--for Gracie was too young, she maintained, to have thoughts of
marriage.
The real facts in that mountain courtship are known to but two, and even
now are as carefully guarded as tho the romance had not become a reality
and culminated happily.
But the neighbors have fragments out of which they build a story, and it
varies with the imagination of the relator. The big Sergeant's
confirmation or denial is a smile and a playful, taunting silence that
leaves conclusion in doubt.
There is a path that leads from the store around the side of the
mountain that edges a shoulder between the store and the Williams home.
A little off this path is a large flat rock. Around it massive beech
trees grow and their boughs arch into a dome above the rock.
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