Free Web and the Rock by Thomas Wolfe Page B

arm.
 "Now, child, I'm goin' to tell you something," she said quietly.
 "There are a whole lot of people in this world who think they're pretty smart--but they never find out anything. Now I suppose that there are lots of smarter people in the world than Rance--I guess they looked on him as sort of simple-minded--but let me tell you something! It's not always the smartest people who know the most--and there are things I could tell you--things I know about!" she whispered with an omened tone, then fell to shaking her head slightly again, her face contracted in a portentous movement--"Child! Child!... I don't know what you'd call it... what explanation you could give for it- but it's mighty strange when you come to think about it, isn't it?"
 "But what? What is it, Aunt Maw?" he demanded feverishly.
 She turned and looked him full in the face for a moment. Then she whispered: "He's been--Seen!... I Saw him once myself!... He's been Seen all through his life," she whispered again. "I know a dozen people who have Seen him," she added quietly. She stitched in silence for a time.
 "Well, I tell you," she presently said, "the first time that they Saw him he was a boy--oh! I reckon along about eight or nine years old at the time. I've heard father tell the story many's the time," she said, "and mother was there and knew about it, too. That was the very year that they were married, sir, that's exactly when it was," she declared triumphantly. "Well, mother and father were still livin' there in Zebulon, and old Bill Joyner was there, too. He hadn't yet moved into town, you know. Oh, it was several years after this before Bill came to Libya Hill to live, and father didn't follow him till after the war was over.... Well, anyway," she said, "Bill was still out in Zebulon, as I was sayin', and the story goes that it was Sunday morning. So after breakfast the whole crowd of them start out for church--all of them except old Bill, you know, and I reckon he had something else to do, or felt that it was all right for him to stay at home so long as all the others went.... Well, anyhow," she smiled, "Bill didn't go to church, but he saw them go, you know! He saw them go!" she cried. "He stood there in the door and watched them as they went down the road--father and Sam and mother, and your great-uncle Rance. Well, anyway, when they had gone--I reckon it was some time later--Bill went out into the kitchen. And when he got there he saw the lid of the wool-box was open. Of course father was a hatter, and he kept the wool from which he made the felt out in the kitchen in this big box.-
 Why, it was big enough for a grown man to stretch out full length in, with some to spare, and of course it was as good a bed as anyone could want. I know that when father wanted to take a nap on Sunday after noons, or get off somewheres by himself to study something over, he'd go back and stretch out on the wool.
 "'Well,' thinks Bill, 'now who could ever have gone and done such a trick as that? Fate told them'--that's what he called my father, Lafayette, you know--'Fate told them to keep that box closed,' and he walks over, you know, to put the lid down--and there he was, sir!" she cried strongly--"There he was, if you please, stretched out on the wool and fast asleep--why, Rance, you know! Rance! There he was!
 ... 'Aha!' thinks Bill, 'I caught you that time, didn't I? Now he's just sneaked off from all the others when he thought my back was turned, and he's crawled back here to have a snooze when he's sup posed to be in church.' That's what Bill thought, you know. 'Now if he thinks he's goin' to play any such trick as that on me, he's very much mistaken. But we'll see,' thinks Bill, 'We'll just wait and see.
 Now, I'm not goin' to wake him up,' says Bill, 'I'll go away and let him sleep--but when the others all get back from church I'm goin' to ask him where he's been. And if he tells the truth--if he confesses that he crawled into the wool-box for a nap, I