At first Dan had begun to read with only
Pinetop for a listener, but gradually, as the tale unfolded, a group of
eager privates filled the little hut and even hung breathlessly about the
doorway in the winter nights. They were mostly gaunt, unwashed volunteers
from the hills or the low countries, to whom literature was only a vast
silence and life a courageous struggle against greater odds. To Dan the
picturesqueness of the scene lent itself with all the force of its strong
lights and shadows, and with the glow of the pine torches on the open page,
his eyes would sometimes wander from the words to rest upon the kindling
faces in the shaggy circle by the fire. Dirty, hollow-eyed, unshaven, it
sat spellbound by the magic of the tale it could not read.
"By Gosh! that's a blamed good bishop," remarked an unkempt smoker one
evening from the threshold, where his beef-hide shoes were covered with
fine snow. "I don't reckon Marse Robert could ha' beat that."
"Marse Robert ain't never tried," put in a companion by the fire.
"Wall, I ain't sayin' he had," corrected the first speaker, through a cloud
of smoke. "Lord, I hope when my time comes I kin slip into heaven on Marse
Robert's coat-tails."
"If you don't, you won't never git thar!" jeered the second. Then they
settled themselves again, and listened with sombre faces and twitching
lips.
It was during this winter that Dan learned how one man's influence may fuse
individual and opposing wills into a single supreme endeavour.
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