The Soldier of the Valley

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The Soldier of the Valley

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Soldier of the Valley, by Nelson
Lloyd, Illustrated by A. B. Frost
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Title: The Soldier of the Valley
Author: Nelson Lloyd

Release Date: November 26, 2005 [eBook #17156]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY***
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THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY
by
NELSON LLOYD
Illustrated by A. B. Frost

[Frontispiece: They called to me as a boy.]

Charles Scribner's Sons New York ------------ 1904 Copyright, 1904, by
Charles Scribner's Sons Published, September, 1904

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
They called to me as a boy . . . . . . Frontispiece "Welcome
home--thrice welcome!"
Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and he had lost
"Well, old chap!"
Josiah Nummler
He did not stop to hear my answer
Swearing terrible oaths that he will never return

No answer came from the floor above
The tiger story
He had a last look at Black Log
"He pumped me dry"
"Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells and quit work"
I was back in my prison
"'At my sover-sover-yne's will'"
Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior
"You'll begin to think you ain't there at all"
I saw a girl on the store porch
Aaron Kallaberger
Leander
"Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn, the Binns of
Turkey Walley"
William had felt the hand of "Doogulus"
"Aren't you coming?" young Colonel seemed to say
Sat little Colonel, wailing
The main thing was proper nursing
Well, ain't he tasty
"But there are no ghosts," I argued
"Of course it hurts me a bit here"

"An seein' a light in the room, I looked in"
Tip Pulsifer leaned on my gate
The horse went down
"And I'm his widder"
Then Tim came
Old Captain
When we three sit by the fire

THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY
I
I was a soldier. I was a hero. You notice my tenses are past. I am a
simple school-teacher now, a prisoner in Black Log. There are no bars
to my keep, only the wall of mountains that make the valley; and look
at them on a clear day, when sunshine and shadow play over their green
slopes, when the clouds all white and gold swing lazily in the blue
above them, and they speak of freedom and of life immeasurable. There
are no chains to my prison, no steel cuffs to gall the limbs, no guards to
threaten and cow me. Yet here I stay year after year. Here I was born
and here I shall die.
I am a traveller. In my mind I have gone the world over, and those
wanderings have been unhampered by the limitations of mere time, for
I know my India of the First Century as well as that of the Twentieth,
and the China of Confucius is as real to me as that of Kwang Su.
Without stirring from my little porch down here in the valley I have
pierced the African jungles and surveyed the Arctic ice-floes. Often the
mountains call me to come again, to climb them, to see the real world
beyond, to live in it, to be of it, but I am a prisoner. They called to me
as a boy, when wandering over the hills, I looked away to them, and

over them, into the mysterious blue, picturing my India and my China,
my England and my Russia in a geographical jumble that began just
beyond the horizon.
Then I was a prisoner in the dungeons of Youth and my mother was my
jailer. The day came when I was free, and forth I went full of hope,
twenty-three years old by the family Bible, with a strong, agile body
and a homely face. I went as a soldier. For months I saw what is called
the world; I had glimpses of cities; I slept beneath the palms; I crossed
a sea and touched the tropics. Marching beneath a blazing sun,
huddling from the storm in the scant shelter of the tent, my spirits were
always keyed to the highest by the thought that I was seeing life and
that these adventures were but a