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+Project Gutenberg's The Call of the Cumberlands, by Charles Neville Buck
+
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+Title: The Call of the Cumberlands
+
+Author: Charles Neville Buck
+
+Release Date: March, 2005 [EBook #7776]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 16, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Avinash Kothare, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo,
+Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS
+
+BY
+
+CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Close to the serried backbone of the Cumberland ridge through a sky of
+mountain clarity, the sun seemed hesitating before its descent to the
+horizon. The sugar-loaf cone that towered above a creek called Misery
+was pointed and edged with emerald tracery where the loftiest timber
+thrust up its crest plumes into the sun. On the hillsides it would be
+light for more than an hour yet, but below, where the waters tossed
+themselves along in a chorus of tiny cascades, the light was already
+thickening into a cathedral gloom. Down there the "furriner" would have
+seen only the rough course of the creek between moss-velveted and
+shaded bowlders of titanic proportions. The native would have
+recognized the country road in these tortuous twistings. Now there were
+no travelers, foreign or native, and no sounds from living throats
+except at intervals the clear "Bob White" of a nesting partridge, and
+the silver confidence of the red cardinal flitting among the pines.
+Occasionally, too, a stray whisper of breeze stole along the creek-bed
+and rustled the beeches, or stirred in the broad, fanlike leaves of the
+"cucumber trees." A great block of sandstone, to whose summit a man
+standing in his saddle could scarcely reach his fingertips, towered
+above the stream, with a gnarled scrub oak clinging tenaciously to its
+apex. Loftily on both sides climbed the mountains cloaked in laurel and
+timber.
+
+Suddenly the leafage was thrust aside from above by a cautious hand,
+and a shy, half-wild girl appeared in the opening. For an instant she
+halted, with her brown fingers holding back the brushwood, and raised
+her face as though listening. Across the slope drifted the call of the
+partridge, and with perfect imitation she whistled back an answer. It
+would have seemed appropriate to anyone who had seen her that she
+should talk bird language to the birds. She was herself as much a wood
+creature as they, and very young. That she was beautiful was not
+strange. The women of the mountains have a morning-glory bloom--until
+hardship and drudgery have taken toll of their youth--and she could not
+have been more than sixteen.
+
+It was June, and the hills, which would be bleakly forbidding barriers
+in winter, were now as blithely young as though they had never known
+the scourging of sleet or the blight of wind. The world was abloom, and
+the girl, too, was in her early June, and sentiently alive with the
+strength of its full pulse-tide. She was slim and lithely resilient of
+step. Her listening attitude was as eloquent of pausing elasticity as
+that of the gray squirrel. Her breathing was soft, though she had come
+down a steep mountainside, and as fragrant as the breath of the elder
+bushes that dashed the banks with white sprays of blossom. She brought
+with her to the greens and grays and browns of the woodland's heart a
+new note of color, for her calico dress was like the red cornucopias of
+the trumpet-flower, and her eyes were blue like little scraps of sky.
+Her heavy, brown-red hair fell down over her shoulders in loose
+profusion. The coarse dress was freshly briar-torn, and in many places
+patched; and it hung to the lithe curves of her body in a fashion which
+told that she wore little else. She had no hat, but the same spirit of
+childlike whimsey that caused her eyes to dance as she answered the
+partridge's call had led her to fashion for her own crowning a headgear
+of laurel leaves and wild roses. As she stood with the toes of one bare
+foot twisting in the gratefully cool moss, she laughed with the sheer
+exhilaration of life and youth, and started out on the table top of the
+huge rock. But there she halted suddenly with a startled exclamation,
+and drew instinctively back. What she saw might well have astonished
+her, for it was a thing she had never seen before and of which she had
+never heard. Now she paused in indecision between going forward toward
+exploration and retreating from new and unexplained phenomena. In her
+quick instinctive movements was something like the irresolution of the
+fawn whose nostrils have dilated to a sense of possible danger.
+Finally, reassured by the silence, she slipped across the broad face of
+the flat rock for a distance of twenty-five feet, and paused again to
+listen.
+
+At the far edge lay a pair of saddlebags, such as form the only
+practical equipment for mountain travelers. They were ordinary
+saddlebags, made from the undressed hide of a brindle cow, and they
+were fat with tight packing. A pair of saddlebags lying unclaimed at
+the roadside would in themselves challenge curiosity. But in this
+instance they gave only the prefatory note to a stranger story. Near
+them lay a tin box, littered with small and unfamiliar-looking tubes of
+soft metal, all grotesquely twisted and stained, and beside the box was
+a strangely shaped plaque of wood, smeared with a dozen hues. That this
+plaque was a painter's sketching palette was a thing which she could
+not know, since the ways of artists had to do with a world as remote
+from her own as the life of the moon or stars. It was one of those
+vague mysteries that made up the wonderful life of "down below." Even
+the names of such towns as Louisville and Lexington meant nothing
+definite to this girl who could barely spell out, "The cat caught the
+rat," in the primer. Yet here beside the box and palette stood a
+strange jointed tripod, and upon it was some sort of sheet. What it all
+meant, and what was on the other side of the sheet became a matter of
+keenly alluring interest. Why had these things been left here in such
+confusion? If there was a man about who owned them he would doubtless
+return to claim them. Possibly he was wandering about the broken bed of
+the creek, searching for a spring, and that would not take long. No one
+drank creek water. At any moment he might return and discover her. Such
+a contingency held untold terrors for her shyness, and yet to turn her
+back on so interesting a mystery would be insupportable. Accordingly,
+she crept over, eyes and ears alert, and slipped around to the front of
+the queer tripod, with all her muscles poised in readiness for flight.
+
+A half-rapturous and utterly astonished cry broke from her lips. She
+stared a moment, then dropped to the moss-covered rock, leaning back on
+her brown hands and gazing intently. She sat there forgetful of
+everything except the sketch which stood on the collapsible easel.
+
+"Hit's purty!" she approved, in a low, musical murmur. "Hit's plumb
+dead _beautiful_!" Her eyes were glowing with delighted approval.
+
+She had never before seen a picture more worthy than the chromos of
+advertising calendars and the few crude prints that find their way into
+the roughest places, and she was a passionate, though totally
+unconscious, devotée of beauty. Now she was sitting before a sketch,
+its paint still moist, which more severe critics would have pronounced
+worthy of accolade. Of course, it was not a finished picture--merely a
+study of what lay before her--but the hand that had placed these
+brushstrokes on the academy board was the sure, deft hand of a master
+of landscape, who had caught the splendid spirit of the thing, and
+fixed it immutably in true and glowing appreciation. Who he was; where
+he had gone; why his work stood there unfinished and abandoned, were
+details which for the moment this half-savage child-woman forgot to
+question. She was conscious only of a sense of revelation and awe. Then
+she saw other boards, like the one upon the easel, piled near the paint
+-box. These were dry, and represented the work of other days; but they
+were all pictures of her own mountains, and in each of them, as in this
+one, was something that made her heart leap.
+
+To her own people, these steep hillsides and "coves" and valleys were
+a matter of course. In their stony soil, they labored by day: and in
+their shadows slept when work was done. Yet, someone had discovered
+that they held a picturesque and rugged beauty; that they were not
+merely steep fields where the plough was useless and the hoe must be
+used. She must tell Samson: Samson, whom she held in an artless
+exaltation of hero-worship; Samson, who was so "smart" that he thought
+about things beyond her understanding; Samson, who could not only read
+and write, but speculate on problematical matters.
+
+Suddenly she came to her feet with a swift-darting impulse of alarm.
+Her ear had caught a sound. She cast searching glances about her, but
+the tangle was empty of humanity. The water still murmured over the
+rocks undisturbed. There was no sign of human presence, other than
+herself, that her eyes could discover--and yet to her ears came the
+sound again, and this time more distinctly. It was the sound of a man's
+voice, and it was moaning as if in pain. She rose and searched vainly
+through the bushes of the hillside where the rock ran out from the
+woods. She lifted her skirts and splashed her bare feet in the shallow
+creek water, wading persistently up and down. Her shyness was
+forgotten. The groan was a groan of a human creature in distress, and
+she must find and succor the person from whom it came.
+
+Certain sounds are baffling as to direction. A voice from overhead or
+broken by echoing obstacles does not readily betray its source. Finally
+she stood up and listened once more intently--her attitude full of
+tense earnestness.
+
+"I'm shore a fool," she announced, half-aloud. "I'm shore a plumb
+fool." Then she turned and disappeared in the deep cleft between the
+gigantic bowlder upon which she had been sitting and another--small
+only by comparison. There, ten feet down, in a narrow alley littered
+with ragged stones, lay the crumpled body of a man. It lay with the
+left arm doubled under it, and from a gash in the forehead trickled a
+thin stream of blood. Also, it was the body of such a man as she had
+not seen before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Although from the man in the gulch came a low groan mingled with his
+breathing, it was not such a sound as comes from fully conscious lips,
+but rather that of a brain dulled into coma. His lids drooped over his
+eyes, hiding the pupils; and his cheeks were pallid, with outstanding
+veins above the temples.
+
+Freed from her fettering excess of shyness by his condition, the girl
+stepped surely from foothold to foothold until she reached his side.
+She stood for a moment with one hand on the dripping walls of rock,
+looking down while her hair fell about her face. Then, dropping to her
+knees, she shifted the doubled body into a leaning posture,
+straightened the limbs, and began exploring with efficient fingers for
+broken bones.
+
+She was a slight girl, and not tall; but the curves of her young
+figure were slimly rounded, and her firm muscles were capably strong.
+This man was, in comparison with those rugged types she knew,
+effeminately delicate. His slim, long-fingered hands reminded her of a
+bird's claws. The up-rolled sleeves of a blue flannel shirt disclosed
+forearms well-enough sinewed, but instead of being browned to the hue
+of a saddle-skirt, they were white underneath and pinkly red above.
+Moreover, they were scaling in the fashion of a skin not inured to
+weather beating. Though the man had thought on setting out from
+civilization that he was suiting his appearance to the environment, the
+impression he made on this native girl was distinctly foreign. The
+flannel shirt might have passed, though hardly without question, as
+native wear, but the khaki riding-breeches and tan puttees were utterly
+out of the picture, and at the neck of his shirt was a soft-blue tie!
+--had he not been hurt, the girl must have laughed at that.
+
+A felt hat lay in a puddle of water, and, except for a blond mustache,
+the face was clean shaven and smooth of skin. Long locks of brown hair
+fell away from the forehead. The helplessness and pallor gave an
+exaggerated seeming of frailty.
+
+Despite an ingrained contempt for weaklings, the girl felt, as she
+raised the head and propped the shoulders, an intuitive friendliness
+for the mysterious stranger.
+
+She had found the left arm limp above the wrist, and her fingers had
+diagnosed a broken bone. But unconsciousness must have come from the
+blow on the head, where a bruise was already blackening, and a gash
+still trickled blood.
+
+She lifted her skirt, and tore a long strip of cotton from her single
+petticoat. Then she picked her barefooted way swiftly to the creek-bed,
+where she drenched the cloth for bathing and bandaging the wound. It
+required several trips through the littered cleft, for the puddles
+between the rocks were stale and brackish; but these journeys she made
+with easy and untrammeled swiftness. When she had done what she could
+by way of first aid, she stood looking down at the man, and shook her
+head dubiously.
+
+"Now ef I jest had a little licker," she mused. "Thet air what he
+needs--a little licker!"
+
+A sudden inspiration turned her eyes to the crest of the rock. She did
+not go round by the path, but pulled herself up the sheer face by
+hanging roots and slippery projections, as easily as a young squirrel.
+On the flat surface, she began unstrapping the saddlebags, and, after a
+few moments of rummaging among their contents, she smiled with
+satisfaction. Her hand brought out a leather-covered flask with a
+silver bottom. She held the thing up curiously, and looked at it. For a
+little time, the screw top puzzled her. So, she sat down cross-legged,
+and experimented until she had solved its method of opening.
+
+Then, she slid over the side again, and at the bottom held the flask
+up to the light. Through the side slits in the alligator-skin covering,
+she saw the deep color of the contents; and, as she lifted the nozzle,
+she sniffed contemptuously. Then, she took a sample draught herself--to
+make certain that it was whiskey.
+
+She brushed her lips scornfully with the back of her hand.
+
+"Huh!" she exclaimed. "Hit hain't nothin' but red licker, but maybe
+hit mout be better'n nuthin'." She was accustomed to seeing whiskey
+freely drunk, but the whiskey she knew was colorless as water, and
+sweetish to the palate.
+
+She knew the "mountain dew" which paid no revenue tax, and which, as
+her people were fond of saying, "mout make a man drunk, but couldn't
+git him wrong." After tasting the "fotched-on" substitute, she gravely,
+in accordance with the fixed etiquette of the hills, wiped the mouth of
+the bottle on the palm of her hand, then, kneeling once more on the
+stones, she lifted the stranger's head in her supporting arm, and
+pressed the flask to his lips. After that, she chafed the wrist which
+was not hurt, and once more administered the tonic. Finally, the man's
+lids fluttered, and his lips moved. Then, he opened his eyes. He opened
+them waveringly, and seemed on the point of closing them again, when he
+became conscious of a curved cheek, suddenly coloring to a deep flush,
+a few inches from his own. He saw in the same glance a pair of wide
+blue eyes, a cloud of brown-red hair that fell down and brushed his
+face, and he felt a slender young arm about his neck and shoulders.
+
+"Hello!" said the stranger, vaguely. "I seem to have----" He broke
+off, and his lips smiled. It was a friendly, understanding smile, and
+the girl, fighting hard the shy impulse to drop his shoulders, and flee
+into the kind masking of the bushes, was in a measure reassured.
+
+"You must hev fell offen the rock," she enlightened.
+
+"I think I might have fallen into worse circumstances," replied the
+unknown.
+
+"I reckon you kin set up after a little."
+
+"Yes, of course." The man suddenly realized that although he was quite
+comfortable as he was, he could scarcely expect to remain permanently
+in the support of her bent arm. He attempted to prop himself on his
+hurt hand, and relaxed with a twinge of extreme pain. The color, which
+had begun to creep back into his cheeks, left them again, and his lips
+compressed themselves tightly to bite off an exclamation of suffering.
+
+"Thet thar left arm air busted," announced the young woman, quietly.
+"Ye've got ter be heedful."
+
+Had one of her own men hurt himself, and behaved stoically, it would
+have been mere matter of course; but her eyes mirrored a pleased
+surprise at the stranger's good-natured nod and his quiet refusal to
+give expression to pain. It relieved her of the necessity for contempt.
+
+"I'm afraid," apologized the painter, "that I've been a great deal of
+trouble to you."
+
+Her lips and eyes were sober as she replied.
+
+"I reckon thet's all right."
+
+"And what's worse, I've got to be more trouble. Did you see anything
+of a brown mule?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"He must have wandered off. May I ask to whom I'm indebted for this
+first aid to the injured?"
+
+"I don't know what ye means."
+
+She had propped him against the rocks, and sat near-by, looking into
+his face with almost disconcerting steadiness; her solemn-pupiled eyes
+were unblinking, unsmiling. Unaccustomed to the gravity of the
+mountaineer in the presence of strangers, he feared that he had
+offended her. Perhaps his form of speech struck her as affected.
+
+"Why, I mean who are you?" he laughed.
+
+"I hain't nobody much. I jest lives over yon."
+
+"But," insisted the man, "surely you have a name."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Hit's Sally."
+
+"Then, Miss Sally, I want to thank you."
+
+Once more she nodded, and, for the first time, let her eyes drop,
+while she sat nursing her knees. Finally, she glanced up, and asked
+with plucked-up courage:
+
+"Stranger, what mout yore name be?"
+
+"Lescott--George Lescott."
+
+"How'd ye git hurt?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I was painting--up there," he said; "and I guess I got too absorbed
+in the work. I stepped backward to look at the canvas, and forgot where
+the edge was. I stepped too far."
+
+"Hit don't hardly pay a man ter walk backward in these hyar
+mountings," she told him. The painter looked covertly up to see if at
+last he had discovered a flash of humor. He had the idea that her lips
+would shape themselves rather fascinatingly in a smile, but her pupils
+mirrored no mirth. She had spoken in perfect seriousness.
+
+The man rose to his feet, but he tottered and reeled against the wall
+of ragged stone. The blow on his head had left him faint and dizzy. He
+sat down again.
+
+"I'm afraid," he ruefully admitted, "that I'm not quite ready for
+discharge from your hospital."
+
+"You jest set where yer at." The girl rose, and pointed up the
+mountainside. "I'll light out across the hill, and fotch Samson an' his
+mule."
+
+"Who and where is Samson?" he inquired. He realized that the bottom of
+the valley would shortly thicken into darkness, and that the way out,
+unguided, would become impossible. "It sounds like the name of a strong
+man."
+
+"I means Samson South," she enlightened, as though further description
+of one so celebrated would be redundant. "He's over thar 'bout three
+quarters."
+
+"Three quarters of a mile?"
+
+She nodded. What else could three quarters mean?
+
+"How long will it take you?" he asked.
+
+She deliberated. "Samson's hoein' corn in the fur-hill field. He'll
+hev ter cotch his mule. Hit mout tek a half-hour."
+
+Lescott had been riding the tortuous labyrinths that twisted through
+creek bottoms and over ridges for several days. In places two miles an
+hour had been his rate of speed, though mounted and following so-called
+roads. She must climb a mountain through the woods. He thought it
+"mout" take longer, and his scepticism found utterance.
+
+"You can't do it in a half-hour, can you?"
+
+"I'll jest take my foot in my hand, an' light out." She turned, and
+with a nod was gone. The man rose, and made his way carefully over to a
+mossy bank, where he sat down with his back against a century-old tree
+to wait.
+
+The beauty of this forest interior had first lured him to pause, and
+then to begin painting. The place had not treated him kindly, as the
+pain in his wrist reminded.
+
+No, but the beauty was undeniable. A clump of rhododendron, a little
+higher up, dashed its pale clusters against a background of evergreen
+thicket, and a catalpa tree loaned the perfume of its white blossoms
+with their wild little splashes of crimson and purple and orange to the
+incense which the elder bushes were contributing.
+
+Climbing fleetly up through steep and tangled slopes, and running as
+fleetly down; crossing a brawling little stream on a slender trunk of
+fallen poplar; the girl hastened on her mission. Her lungs drank the
+clear air in regular tireless draughts. Once only, she stopped and drew
+back. There was a sinister rustle in the grass, and something glided
+into her path and lay coiled there, challenging her with an ominous
+rattle, and with wicked, beady eyes glittering out of a swaying, arrow
+-shaped head. Her own eyes instinctively hardened, and she glanced
+quickly about for a heavy piece of loose timber. But that was only for
+an instant, then she took a circuitous course, and left her enemy in
+undisputed possession of the path.
+
+"I hain't got no time ter fool with ye now, old rattlesnake," she
+called back, as she went. "Ef I wasn't in sech a hurry, I'd shore bust
+yer neck."
+
+At last, she came to a point where a clearing rose on the mountainside
+above her. The forest blanket was stripped off to make way for a fenced-
+in and crazily tilting field of young corn. High up and beyond, close
+to the bald shoulders of sandstone which threw themselves against the
+sky, was the figure of a man. As the girl halted at the foot of the
+field, at last panting from her exertions, he was sitting on the rail
+fence, looking absently down on the outstretched panorama below him. It
+is doubtful whether his dreaming eyes were as conscious of what he saw
+as of other things which his imagination saw beyond the haze of the
+last far rim. Against the fence rested his abandoned hoe, and about him
+a number of lean hounds scratched and dozed in the sun. Samson South
+had little need of hounds; but, in another century, his people, turning
+their backs on Virginia affluence to invite the hardships of pioneer
+life, had brought with them certain of the cavaliers' instincts. A
+hundred years in the stagnant back-waters of the world had brought to
+their descendants a lapse into illiteracy and semi-squalor, but through
+it all had fought that thin, insistent flame of instinct. Such a
+survival was the boy's clinging to his hounds. Once, they had
+symbolized the spirit of the nobility; the gentleman's fondness for his
+sport with horse and dog and gun. Samson South did not know the origin
+of his fondness for this remnant of a pack. He did not know that in the
+long ago his forefathers had fought on red fields with Bruce and the
+Stuarts. He only knew that through his crudities something indefinable,
+yet compelling, was at war with his life, filling him with great and
+shapeless longings. He at once loved and resented these ramparts of
+stone that hemmed in his hermit race and world.
+
+He was not, strictly speaking, a man. His age was perhaps twenty. He
+sat loose-jointed and indolent on the top rail of the fence, his hands
+hanging over his knees: his hoe forgotten. His feet were bare, and his
+jeans breeches were supported by a single suspender strap. Pushed well
+to the back of his head was a battered straw hat, of the sort rurally
+known as the "ten-cent jimmy." Under its broken brim, a long lock of
+black hair fell across his forehead. So much of his appearance was
+typical of the Kentucky mountaineer. His face was strongly individual,
+and belonged to no type. Black brows and lashes gave a distinctiveness
+to gray eyes so clear as to be luminous. A high and splendidly molded
+forehead and a squarely blocked chin were free of that degeneracy which
+marks the wasting of an in-bred people. The nose was straight, and the
+mouth firm yet mobile. It was the face of the instinctive philosopher,
+tanned to a hickory brown. In a stature of medium size, there was still
+a hint of power and catamount alertness. If his attitude was at the
+moment indolent, it was such indolence as drowses between bursts of
+white-hot activity; a fighting man's aversion to manual labor which,
+like the hounds, harked back to other generations. Near-by, propped
+against the rails, rested a repeating rifle, though the people would
+have told you that the truce in the "South-Hollman war" had been
+unbroken for two years, and that no clansman need in these halcyon days
+go armed afield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Sally clambered lightly over the fence, and started on the last stage
+of her journey, the climb across the young corn rows. It was a field
+stood on end, and the hoed ground was uneven; but with no seeming of
+weariness her red dress flashed steadfastly across the green spears,
+and her voice was raised to shout: "Hello, Samson!"
+
+The young man looked up and waved a languid greeting. He did not
+remove his hat or descend from his place of rest, and Sally, who
+expected no such attention, came smilingly on. Samson was her hero. It
+seemed quite appropriate that one should have to climb steep
+acclivities to reach him. Her enamored eyes saw in the top rail of the
+fence a throne, which she was content to address from the ground level.
+That he was fond of her and meant some day to marry her she knew, and
+counted herself the most favored of women. The young men of the
+neighboring coves, too, knew it, and respected his proprietary rights.
+If he treated her with indulgent tolerance instead of chivalry, he was
+merely adopting the accepted attitude of the mountain man for the
+mountain woman, not unlike that of the red warrior for his squaw.
+Besides, Sally was still almost a child, and Samson, with his twenty
+years, looked down from a rank of seniority. He was the legitimate head
+of the Souths, and some day, when the present truce ended, would be
+their war-leader with certain blood debts to pay. Since his father had
+been killed by a rifle shot from ambush, he had never been permitted to
+forget that, and, had he been left alone, he would still have needed no
+other mentor than the rankle in his heart.
+
+But, if Samson sternly smothered the glint of tenderness which, at
+sight of her, rose to his eyes, and recognized her greeting only in
+casual fashion, it was because such was the requirement of his stoic
+code. And to the girl who had been so slow of utterance and diffident
+with the stranger, words now came fast and fluently as she told her
+story of the man who lay hurt at the foot of the rock.
+
+"Hit hain't long now tell sundown," she urged. "Hurry, Samson, an' git
+yore mule. I've done give him my promise ter fotch ye right straight
+back."
+
+Samson took off his hat, and tossed the heavy lock upward from his
+forehead. His brow wrinkled with doubts.
+
+"What sort of lookin' feller air he?"
+
+While Sally sketched a description, the young man's doubt grew graver.
+
+"This hain't no fit time ter be takin' in folks what we hain't
+acquainted with," he objected. In the mountains, any time is the time
+to take in strangers unless there are secrets to be guarded from
+outside eyes.
+
+"Why hain't it?" demanded the girl. "He's hurt. We kain't leave him
+layin' thar, kin we?"
+
+Suddenly, her eyes caught sight of the rifle leaning near-by, and
+straightway they filled with apprehension. Her militant love would have
+turned to hate for Samson, should he have proved recreant to the
+mission of reprisal in which he was biding his time, yet the coming of
+the day when the truce must end haunted her thoughts. Heretofore, that
+day had always been to her remotely vague--a thing belonging to the
+future. Now, with a sudden and appalling menace, it seemed to loom
+across the present. She came close, and her voice sank with her sinking
+heart.
+
+"What air hit?" she tensely demanded. "What air hit, Samson? What fer
+hev ye fetched yer gun ter the field?"
+
+The boy laughed. "Oh, hit ain't nothin' pertic'ler," he reassured.
+"Hit hain't nothin' fer a gal ter fret herself erbout, only I kinder
+suspicions strangers jest now."
+
+"Air the truce busted?" She put the question in a tense, deep-breathed
+whisper, and the boy replied casually, almost indifferently.
+
+"No, Sally, hit hain't jest ter say busted, but 'pears like hit's
+right smart cracked. I reckon, though," he added in half-disgust,
+"nothin' won't come of hit."
+
+Somewhat reassured, she bethought herself again of her mission.
+
+"This here furriner hain't got no harm in him, Samson," she pleaded.
+"He 'pears ter be more like a gal than a man. He's real puny. He's got
+white skin and a bow of ribbon on his neck--an' he paints pictchers."
+
+The boy's face had been hardening with contempt as the description
+advanced, but at the last words a glow came to his eyes, and he
+demanded almost breathlessly:
+
+"Paints pictchers? How do ye know that?"
+
+"I seen 'em. He was paintin' one when he fell offen the rock and
+busted his arm. It's shore es beautiful es--" she broke off, then added
+with a sudden peal of laughter--"es er pictcher."
+
+The young man slipped down from the fence, and reached for the rifle.
+The hoe he left where it stood.
+
+"I'll git the nag," he announced briefly, and swung off without
+further parley toward the curling spiral of smoke that marked a cabin a
+quarter of a mile below. Ten minutes later, his bare feet swung against
+the ribs of a gray mule, and his rifle lay balanced across the
+unsaddled withers. Sally sat mountain fashion behind him, facing
+straight to the side.
+
+So they came along the creek bed and into the sight of the man who
+still sat propped against the mossy rock. As Lescott looked up, he
+closed the case of his watch, and put it back into his pocket with a
+smile.
+
+"Snappy work, that!" he called out. "Just thirty-three minutes. I
+didn't believe it could be done."
+
+Samson's face was mask-like, but, as he surveyed the foreigner, only
+the ingrained dictates of the country's hospitable code kept out of his
+eyes a gleam of scorn for this frail member of a sex which should be
+stalwart.
+
+"Howdy?" he said. Then he added suspiciously: "What mout yer business
+be in these parts, stranger?"
+
+Lescott gave the odyssey of his wanderings, since he had rented a mule
+at Hixon and ridden through the country, sketching where the mood
+prompted and sleeping wherever he found a hospitable roof at the coming
+of the evening.
+
+"Ye come from over on Crippleshin?" The boy flashed the question with
+a sudden hardening of the voice, and, when he was affirmatively
+answered, his eyes contracted and bored searchingly into the stranger's
+face.
+
+"Where'd ye put up last night?"
+
+"Red Bill Hollman's house, at the mouth of Meeting House Fork; do you
+know the place?"
+
+Samson's reply was curt.
+
+"I knows hit all right."
+
+There was a moment's pause--rather an awkward pause. Lescott's mind
+began piecing together fragments of conversation he had heard, until he
+had assembled a sort of mental jig-saw puzzle.
+
+The South-Hollman feud had been mentioned by the more talkative of his
+informers, and carefully tabooed by others--notable among them his host
+of last night. It now dawned on him that he was crossing the boundary
+and coming as the late guest of a Hollman to ask the hospitality of a
+South.
+
+"I didn't know whose house it was," he hastened to explain, "until I
+was benighted, and asked for lodging. They were very kind to me. I'd
+never seen them before. I'm a stranger hereabouts."
+
+Samson only nodded. If the explanation failed to satisfy him, it at
+least seemed to do so.
+
+"I reckon ye'd better let me holp ye up on thet old mule," he said;
+"hit's a-comin' on ter be night."
+
+With the mountaineer's aid, Lescott clambered astride the mount, then
+he turned dubiously.
+
+"I'm sorry to trouble you," he ventured, "but I have a paint box and
+some materials up there. If you'll bring them down here, I'll show you
+how to pack the easel, and, by the way," he anxiously added, "please
+handle that fresh canvas carefully--by the edge--it's not dry yet."
+
+He had anticipated impatient contempt for his artist's impedimenta,
+but to his surprise the mountain boy climbed the rock, and halted
+before the sketch with a face that slowly softened to an expression of
+amazed admiration. Finally, he took up the square of academy board with
+a tender care of which his rough hands would have seemed incapable, and
+stood stock still, presenting an anomalous figure in his rough clothes
+as his eyes grew almost idolatrous. Then, he brought the landscape over
+to its creator, and, though no word was spoken, there flashed between
+the eyes of the artist, whose signature gave to a canvas the value of a
+precious stone and the jeans-clad boy whose destiny was that of the
+vendetta, a subtle, wordless message. It was the countersign of
+brothers-in-blood who recognize in each other the bond of a mutual
+passion.
+
+The boy and the girl, under Lescott's direction, packed the outfit,
+and stored the canvas in the protecting top of the box. Then, while
+Sally turned and strode down creek in search of Lescott's lost mount,
+the two men rode up stream in silence. Finally. Samson spoke slowly and
+diffidently.
+
+"Stranger," he ventured, "ef hit hain't askin' too much, will ye let
+me see ye paint one of them things?"
+
+"Gladly," was the prompt reply.
+
+Then, the boy added covertly:
+
+"Don't say nothin' erbout hit ter none of these folks. They'd devil me."
+
+The dusk was falling now, and the hollows choking with murk. Over the
+ridge, the evening star showed in a lonely point of pallor. The peaks,
+which in a broader light had held their majestic distances, seemed with
+the falling of night to draw in and huddle close in crowding herds of
+black masses. The distant tinkling of a cow-bell came drifting down the
+breeze with a weird and fanciful softness.
+
+"We're nigh home now," said Samson at the end of some minutes' silent
+plodding. "Hit's right beyond thet thar bend."
+
+Then, they rounded a point of timber, and came upon a small party of
+men whose attitudes even in the dimming light conveyed a subtle
+suggestion of portent. Some sat their horses, with one leg thrown
+across the pommel. Others stood in the road, and a bottle of white
+liquor was passing in and out among them. At the distance they
+recognized the gray mule, though even the fact that it carried a double
+burden was not yet manifest.
+
+"Thet you, Samson?" called an old man's voice, which was still very
+deep and powerful.
+
+"Hello, Unc' Spicer!" replied the boy.
+
+Then, followed a silence unbroken until the mule reached the group,
+revealing that besides the boy another man--and a strange man--had
+joined their number.
+
+"Evenin', stranger," they greeted him, gravely; then again they fell
+silent, and in their silence was evident constraint.
+
+"This hyar man's a furriner," announced Samson, briefly. "He fell
+offen a rock, an' got hurt. I 'lowed I'd fotch him home ter stay all
+night."
+
+The elderly man who had hailed the boy nodded, but with an evident
+annoyance. It seemed that to him the others deferred as to a commanding
+officer. The cortege remounted and rode slowly toward the house. At
+last, the elderly man came alongside the mule, and inquired:
+
+"Samson, where was ye last night?"
+
+"Thet's my business."
+
+"Mebbe hit hain't." The old mountaineer spoke with no resentment, but
+deep gravity. "We've been powerful oneasy erbout ye. Hev ye heered the
+news?"
+
+"What news?" The boy put the question non-committally.
+
+"Jesse Purvy was shot soon this morning."
+
+The boy vouchsafed no reply.
+
+"The mail-rider done told hit.... Somebody shot five shoots from the
+laurel.... Purvy hain't died yit.... Some says as how his folks has
+sent ter Lexington fer bloodhounds."
+
+The boy's eyes began to smolder hatefully.
+
+"I reckon," he spoke slowly, "he didn't git shot none too soon."
+
+"Samson!" The old man's voice had the ring of determined authority.
+"When I dies, ye'll be the head of the Souths, but so long es I'm
+a-runnin' this hyar fam'ly, I keeps my word ter friend an' foe alike.
+I reckon Jesse Purvy knows who got yore pap, but up till now no South
+hain't never busted no truce."
+
+The boy's voice dropped its softness, and took on a shrill crescendo
+of excitement as he flashed out his retort.
+
+"Who said a South has done busted the truce this time?"
+
+Old Spencer South gazed searchingly at his nephew.
+
+"I hain't a-wantin' ter suspicion ye, Samson, but I know how ye feels
+about yore pap. I heered thet Bud Spicer come by hyar yistiddy plumb
+full of liquor, an' 'lowed he'd seed Jesse an' Jim Asberry a-talkin'
+tergether jest afore yore pap was kilt." He broke off abruptly, then
+added: "Ye went away from hyar last night, an' didn't git in twell
+atter sun-up--I just heered the news, an' come ter look fer ye."
+
+"Air you-all 'lowin' thet I shot them shoots from the laurel?"
+inquired Samson, quietly.
+
+"Ef we-all hain't 'lowin' hit, Samson, we're plumb shore thet Jesse
+Purvy's folks will 'low hit. They're jest a-holdin' yore life like a
+hostage fer Purvy's, anyhow. Ef he dies, they'll try ter git ye."
+
+The boy flashed a challenge about the group, which was now drawing
+rein at Spicer South's yard fence. His eyes were sullen, but he made no
+answer.
+
+One of the men who had listened in silence now spoke:
+
+"In the fust place, Samson, we hain't a-sayin' ye done hit. In the
+nex' place, ef ye did do hit, we hain't a-blamin' ye--much. But I
+reckon them dawgs don't lie, an', ef they trails in hyar, ye'll need
+us. Thet's why we've done come."
+
+The boy slipped down from his mule, and helped Lescott to dismount. He
+deliberately unloaded the saddlebags and kit, and laid them on the top
+step of the stile, and, while he held his peace, neither denying nor
+affirming, his kinsmen sat their horses and waited.
+
+Even to Lescott, it was palpable that some of them believed the young
+heir to clan leadership responsible for the shooting of Jesse Purvy,
+and that others believed him innocent, yet none the less in danger of
+the enemy's vengeance. But, regardless of divided opinion, all were
+alike ready to stand at his back, and all alike awaited his final
+utterance.
+
+Then, in the thickening gloom, Samson turned at the foot of the stile,
+and faced the gathering. He stood rigid, and his eyes flashed with deep
+passion. His hands, hanging at the seams of his jeans breeches,
+clenched, and his voice came in a slow utterance through which throbbed
+the tensity of a soul-absorbing bitterness.
+
+"I knowed all 'bout Jesse Purvy's bein' shot.... When my pap lay a-dyin'
+over thar at his house, I was a little shaver ten years old ... Jesse
+Purvy hired somebody ter kill him ... an' I promised my pap that I'd
+find out who thet man was, an' thet I'd git 'em both--some day. So help
+me, God Almighty, I'm a-goin' ter git 'em both--some day!" The boy
+paused and lifted one hand as though taking an oath.
+
+"I'm a-tellin' you-all the truth.... But I didn't shoot them shoots
+this mornin'. I hain't no truce-buster. I gives ye my hand on hit....
+Ef them dawgs comes hyar, they'll find me hyar, an' ef they hain't
+liars, they'll go right on by hyar. I don't 'low ter run away, an' I
+don't 'low ter hide out. I'm agoin' ter stay right hyar. Thet's all
+I've got ter say ter ye."
+
+For a moment, there was no reply. Then, the older man nodded with a
+gesture of relieved anxiety.
+
+"Thet's all we wants ter know, Samson," he said, slowly. "Light, men,
+an' come in."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+In days when the Indian held the Dark and Bloody Grounds a pioneer,
+felling oak and poplar logs for the home he meant to establish on the
+banks of a purling water-course, let his axe slip, and the cutting edge
+gashed his ankle. Since to the discoverer belongs the christening, that
+water-course became Cripple-shin, and so it is to-day set down on atlas
+pages. A few miles away, as the crow flies, but many weary leagues as a
+man must travel, a brother settler, racked with rheumatism, gave to his
+creek the name of Misery. The two pioneers had come together from
+Virginia, as their ancestors had come before them from Scotland.
+Together, they had found one of the two gaps through the mountain wall,
+which for more than a hundred miles has no other passable rift.
+Together, and as comrades, they had made their homes, and founded their
+race. What original grievance had sprung up between their descendants
+none of the present generation knew--perhaps it was a farm line or
+disputed title to a pig. The primary incident was lost in the limbo of
+the past; but for fifty years, with occasional intervals of truce,
+lives had been snuffed out in the fiercely burning hate of these men
+whose ancestors had been comrades.
+
+Old Spicer South and his nephew Samson were the direct lineal
+descendants of the namer of Misery. Their kinsmen dwelt about them: the
+Souths, the Jaspers, the Spicers, the Wileys, the Millers and McCagers.
+Other families, related only by marriage and close association, were,
+in feud alignment, none the less "Souths." And over beyond the ridge,
+where the springs and brooks flowed the other way to feed Crippleshin,
+dwelt the Hollmans, the Purvies, the Asberries, the Hollises and the
+Daltons--men equally strong in their vindictive fealty to the code of
+the vendetta.
+
+By mountain standards, old Spicer South was rich. His lands had been
+claimed when tracts could be had for the taking, and, though he had to
+make his cross mark when there was a contract to be signed, his
+instinctive mind was shrewd and far seeing. The tinkle of his cow-bells
+was heard for a long distance along the creek bottoms. His hillside
+fields were the richest and his coves the most fertile in that country.
+His house had several rooms, and, except for those who hated him and
+whom he hated, he commanded the respect of his fellows. Some day, when
+a railroad should burrow through his section, bringing the development
+of coal and timber at the head of the rails, a sleeping fortune would
+yawn and awake to enrich him. There were black outcrop-pings along the
+cliffs, which he knew ran deep in veins of bituminous wealth. But to
+that time he looked with foreboding, for he had been raised to the
+standards of his forefathers, and saw in the coming of a new régime a
+curtailment of personal liberty. For new-fangled ideas he held only the
+aversion of deep-rooted prejudice. He hoped that he might live out his
+days, and pass before the foreigner held his land, and the Law became a
+power stronger than the individual or the clan. The Law was his enemy,
+because it said to him, "Thou shalt not," when he sought to take the
+yellow corn which bruising labor had coaxed from scattered rock-strewn
+fields to his own mash-vat and still. It meant, also, a tyrannous power
+usually seized and administered by enemies, which undertook to forbid
+the personal settlement of personal quarrels. But his eyes, which could
+not read print, could read the signs of the times He foresaw the
+inevitable coming of that day. Already, he had given up the worm and
+mash-vat, and no longer sought to make or sell illicit liquor. That was
+a concession to the Federal power, which could no longer be
+successfully fought. State power was still largely a weapon in
+factional hands, and in his country the Hollmans were the
+officeholders. To the Hollmans, he could make no concessions. In
+Samson, born to be the fighting man, reared to be the fighting man,
+equipped by nature with deep hatreds and tigerish courage, there had
+cropped out from time to time the restless spirit of the philosopher
+and a hunger for knowledge. That was a matter in which the old man
+found his bitterest and most secret apprehension.
+
+It was at this house that George Lescott, distinguished landscape
+painter of New York and the world-at-large, arrived in the twilight.
+His first impression was received in shadowy evening mists that gave a
+touch of the weird. The sweep of the stone-guarded well rose in a yard
+tramped bare of grass. The house itself, a rambling structure of logs,
+with additions of undressed lumber, was without lights. The cabin,
+which had been the pioneer nucleus, still stood windowless and with mud
+-daubed chimney at the center. About it rose a number of tall poles
+surmounted by bird-boxes, and at its back loomed the great hump of the
+mountain.
+
+Whatever enemy might have to be met to-morrow, old Spicer South
+recognized as a more immediate call upon his attention the wounded
+guest of to-day. One of the kinsmen proved to have a rude working
+knowledge of bone-setting, and before the half-hour had passed,
+Lescott's wrist was in a splint, and his injuries as well tended as
+possible, which proved to be quite well enough.
+
+By that time, Sally's voice was heard shouting from the stile, and
+Sally herself appeared with the announcement that she had found and
+brought in the lost mule.
+
+As Lescott looked at her, standing slight and willowy in the
+thickening darkness, among the big-boned and slouching figures of the
+clansmen, she seemed to shrink from the stature of a woman into that of
+a child, and, as she felt his eyes on her, she timidly slipped farther
+back into the shadowy door of the cabin, and dropped down on the sill,
+where, with her hands clasped about her knees, she gazed curiously at
+himself. She did not speak, but sat immovable with her thick hair
+falling over her shoulders. The painter recognized that even the
+interest in him as a new type could not for long keep her eyes from
+being drawn to the face of Samson, where they lingered, and in that
+magnetism he read, not the child, but the woman.
+
+Samson was plainly restive from the moment of her arrival, and, when a
+monosyllabic comment from the taciturn group threatened to reveal to
+the girl the threatened outbreak of the feud, he went over to her, and
+inquired:
+
+"Sally, air ye skeered ter go home by yeself?"
+
+As she met the boy's eyes, it was clear that her own held neither
+nervousness nor fear, and yet there was something else in them--the
+glint of invitation. She rose from her seat.
+
+"I hain't ter say skeered," she told him, "but, ef ye wants ter walk
+as fur as the stile, I hain't a-keerin'."
+
+The youth rose, and, taking his hat and rifle, followed her.
+
+Lescott was happily gifted with the power of facile adaptation, and he
+unobtrusively bent his efforts toward convincing his new acquaintances
+that, although he was alien to their ways, he was sympathetic and to be
+trusted. Once that assurance was given, the family talk went on much as
+though he had been absent, and, as he sat with open ears, he learned
+the rudiments of the conditions that had brought the kinsmen together
+in Samson's defense.
+
+At last, Spicer South's sister, a woman who looked older than himself,
+though she was really younger, appeared, smoking a clay pipe, which she
+waved toward the kitchen.
+
+"You men kin come in an' eat," she announced; and the mountaineers,
+knocking the ashes from their pipes, trailed into the kitchen.
+
+The place was lit by the fire in a cavernous hearth where the cooking
+was still going forward with skillet and crane. The food, coarse and
+greasy, but not unwholesome, was set on a long table covered with
+oilcloth. The roughly clad men sat down with a scraping of chair legs,
+and attacked their provender in businesslike silence.
+
+The corners of the room fell into obscurity. Shadows wavered against
+the sooty rafters, and, before the meal ended, Samson returned and
+dropped without comment into his chair. Afterward, the men trooped
+taciturnly out again, and resumed their pipes.
+
+A whippoorwill sent his mournful cry across the tree-tops, and was
+answered. Frogs added the booming of their tireless throats. A young
+moon slipped across an eastern mountain, and livened the creek into a
+soft shimmer wherein long shadows quavered. The more distant line of
+mountains showed in a mist of silver, and the nearer heights in blue
+-gray silhouette. A wizardry of night and softness settled like a
+benediction, and from the dark door of the house stole the quaint
+folklore cadence of a rudely thrummed banjo. Lescott strolled over to
+the stile with every artist instinct stirred. This nocturne of silver
+and gray and blue at once soothed and intoxicated his imagination. His
+fingers were itching for a brush.
+
+Then, he heard a movement at his shoulder, and, turning, saw the boy
+Samson with the moonlight in his eyes, and, besides the moonlight, that
+sparkle which is the essence of the dreamer's vision. Once more, their
+glances met and flashed a countersign.
+
+"Hit hain't got many colors in hit," said the boy, slowly, indicating
+with a sweep of his hand the symphony about them, "but somehow what
+there is is jest about the right ones. Hit whispers ter a feller, the
+same as a mammy whispers ter her baby." He paused, then eagerly asked:
+"Stranger, kin you look at the sky an' the mountings an' hear 'em
+singin'--with yore eyes?"
+
+The painter felt a thrill of astonishment. It seemed incredible that
+the boy, whose rude descriptives reflected such poetry of feeling,
+could be one with the savage young animal who had, two hours before,
+raised his hand heavenward, and reiterated his oath to do murder in
+payment of murder.
+
+"Yes," was his slow reply, "every painter must do that. Music and
+color are two expressions of the same thing--and the thing is Beauty."
+
+The mountain boy made no reply, but his eyes dwelt on the quivering
+shadows in the water; and Lescott asked cautiously, fearing to wake him
+from the dreamer to the savage:
+
+"So you are interested in skies and hills and their beauties, too, are
+you?"
+
+Samson's laugh was half-ashamed, half-defiant.
+
+"Sometimes, stranger," he said, "I 'lows that I hain't much interested
+in nothin' else."
+
+That there dwelt in the lad something which leaped in response to the
+clarion call of beauty, Lescott had read in that momentary give and
+take of their eyes down there in the hollow earlier in the afternoon.
+But, since then, the painter had seen the other and sterner side, and
+once more he was puzzled and astonished. Now, he stood anxiously hoping
+that the boy would permit himself further expression, yet afraid to
+prompt, lest direct questions bring a withdrawal again into the shell
+of taciturnity. After a few moments of silence, he slowly turned his
+head, and glanced at his companion, to find him standing rigidly with
+his elbows resting on the top palings of the fence. He had thrown his
+rough hat to the ground, and his face in the pale moonlight was raised.
+His eyes under the black mane of hair were glowing deeply with a fire
+of something like exaltation, as he gazed away. It was the expression
+of one who sees things hidden to the generality; such a light as burns
+in the eyes of artists and prophets and fanatics, which, to the
+uncomprehending, seems almost a fire of madness. Samson must have felt
+Lescott's scrutiny, for he turned with a half-passionate gesture and
+clenched fists. His face, as he met the glance of the foreigner was
+sullen, and then, as though in recognition of a brother-spirit, his
+expression softened, and slowly he began to speak.
+
+"These folks 'round hyar sometimes 'lows I hain't much better'n an
+idjit because--because I feels that-away. Even Sally"--he caught
+himself, then went on doggedly--"even Sally kain't see how a man kin
+keer about things like skies and the color of the hills, ner the way
+ther sunset splashes the sky clean acrost its aidge, ner how the
+sunrise comes outen the dark like a gal a-blushin'. They 'lows thet a
+man had ought ter be studyin' 'bout other things."
+
+He paused, and folded his arms, and his strong fingers grasped his
+tensed biceps until the knuckles stood out, as he went on:
+
+"I reckon they hain't none of them thet kin hate harder'n me. I reckon
+they hain't none of 'em thet is more plumb willin' ter fight them
+thet's rightful enemies, an' yit hit 'pears ter me as thet hain't no
+reason why a man kain't feel somethin' singin' inside him when Almighty
+God builds hills like them"--he swept both hands out in a wide circle--
+"an' makes 'em green in summer, an' lets 'em blaze in red an' yaller in
+ther fall, an' hangs blue skies over 'em an' makes ther sun shine, an'
+at night sprinkles 'em with stars an' a moon like thet!" Again, he
+paused, and his eyes seemed to ask the corroboration which they read in
+the expression and nod of the stranger from the mysterious outside
+world. Then, Samson South spread his hands in a swift gesture of
+protest, and his voice hardened in timbre as he went on:
+
+"But these folks hyarabouts kain't understand thet. All they sees in
+the laurel on the hillside, an' the big gray rocks an' the green trees,
+is breshwood an' timber thet may be hidin' their enemies, or places ter
+hide out an' lay-way some other feller. I hain't never seen no other
+country. I don't know whether all places is like these hyar mountings
+er not, but I knows thet the Lord didn't 'low fer men ter live blind,
+not seein' no beauty in nothin'; ner not feelin' nothin' but hate an'
+meanness--ner studyin' 'bout nothin' but deviltry. There hain't no
+better folks nowhar then my folks, an' thar hain't no meaner folks
+nowhar then them damned Hollmans, but thar's times when hit 'pears ter
+me thet the Lord Almighty hain't plumb tickled ter death with ther way
+things goes hyar along these creeks and coves."
+
+Samson paused, and suddenly the glow died out of his eyes. His
+features instantly reshaped themselves into their customary mold of
+stoical hardness. It occurred to him that his outburst had been a long
+one and strangely out of keeping with his usual taciturnity, and he
+wondered what this stranger would think of him.
+
+The stranger was marveling. He was seeing in the crude lad at his side
+warring elements that might build into a unique and strangely
+interesting edifice of character, and his own speech as he talked there
+by the palings of the fence in the moonlight was swiftly establishing
+the foundations of a comradeship between the two.
+
+"Thar's something mighty quare about ye, stranger," said the boy at
+last, half-shyly. "I been wonderin' why I've talked ter ye like this. I
+hain't never talked that-away with no other man. Ye jest seemed ter
+kind of compel me ter do hit. When I says things like thet ter Sally,
+she gits skeered of me like ef I was plumb crazy, an', ef I talked that-
+away to the menfolks 'round hyar they'd be sartain I was an idjit."
+
+"That," said Lescott, gravely, "is because they don't understand. I do."
+
+"I kin lay awake nights," said Samson, "an' see them hills and mists
+an' colors the same es ef they was thar in front of my eyes--an' I kin
+seem ter hear 'em as well as see 'em."
+
+The painter nodded, and his voice fell into low quotation:
+
+  "'The scarlet of the maple can shake me like the cry
+  "Of bugles going by.'"
+
+The boy's eyes deepened. To Lescott, the thought of bugles conjured up
+a dozen pictures of marching soldiery under a dozen flags. To Samson
+South, it suggested only one: militia guarding a battered courthouse,
+but to both the simile brought a stirring of pulses.
+
+Even in June, the night mists bring a touch of chill to the mountains,
+and the clansmen shortly carried their chairs indoors. The old woman
+fetched a pan of red coals from the kitchen, and kindled the logs on
+the deep hearth. There was no other light, and, until the flames
+climbed to roaring volume, spreading their zone of yellow brightness,
+only the circle about the fireplace emerged from the sooty shadows. In
+the four dark corners of the room were four large beds, vaguely seen,
+and from one of them still came the haunting monotony of the banjo.
+
+Suddenly, out of the silence, rose Samson's voice, keyed to a stubborn
+note, as though anticipating and challenging contradiction.
+
+"Times is changin' mighty fast. A feller thet grows up plumb ign'rant
+ain't a-goin' ter have much show."
+
+Old Spicer South drew a contemplative puff at his pipe.
+
+"Ye went ter school twell ye was ten year old, Samson. Thet's a heap
+more schoolin' then I ever had, an' I've done got along all right."
+
+"Ef my pap had lived"--the boy's voice was almost accusing--"I'd hev
+lamed more then jest ter read an' write en figger a little."
+
+"I hain't got no use fer these newfangled notions." Spicer spoke with
+careful curbing of his impatience. "Yore pap stood out fer eddycation.
+He had ideas about law an' all that, an' he talked 'em. He got shot ter
+death. Yore Uncle John South went down below, an' got ter be a lawyer.
+He come home hyar, an' ondertook ter penitentiary Jesse Purvy, when
+Jesse was High Sheriff. I reckon ye knows what happened ter him."
+
+Samson said nothing and the older man went on:
+
+"They aimed ter run him outen the mountings."
+
+"They didn't run him none," blazed the boy. "He didn't never leave the
+mountings."
+
+"No." The family head spoke with the force of a logical climax. "He'd
+done rented a house down below though, an' was a-fixin' ter move. He
+staid one day too late. Jesse Purvy hired him shot."
+
+"What of hit?" demanded Samson.
+
+"Yore cousin, Bud Spicer, was eddicated. He 'lowed in public thet
+Micah Hollman an' Jesse Purvy was runnin' a murder partnership.
+Somebody called him ter the door of his house in the night-time ter
+borry a lantern--an' shot him ter death."
+
+"What of hit?"
+
+"Thar's jist this much of hit. Hit don't seem ter pay the South family
+ter go a-runnin' attar newfangled idees. They gets too much notion of
+goin' ter law--an' thet's plumb fatal. Ye'd better stay where ye
+b'longs, Samson, an' let good enough be."
+
+"Why hain't ye done told about all the rest of the Souths thet didn't
+hev no eddication," suggested the youngest South, "thet got killed off
+jest as quick as them as had hit?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+While Spicer South and his cousins had been sustaining themselves or
+building up competences by tilling their soil, the leaders of the other
+faction were basing larger fortunes on the profits of merchandise and
+trade. So, although Spicer South could neither read nor write, his
+chief enemy, Micah Hollman, was to outward seeming an urbane and fairly
+equipped man of affairs. Judged by their heads, the clansmen were
+rougher and more illiterate on Misery, and in closer touch with
+civilization on Crippleshin. A deeper scrutiny showed this seeming to
+be one of the strange anomalies of the mountains.
+
+Micah Hollman had established himself at Hixon, that shack town which
+had passed of late years from feudal county seat to the section's one
+point of contact with the outside world; a town where the ancient and
+modern orders brushed shoulders; where the new was tolerated, but dared
+not become aggressive. Directly across the street from the court-house
+stood an ample frame building, on whose side wall was emblazoned the
+legend: "Hollman's Mammoth Department Store." That was the secret
+stronghold of Hollman power. He had always spoken deploringly of that
+spirit of lawlessness which had given the mountains a bad name. He
+himself, he declared, believed that the best assets of any community
+were tenets of peace and brotherhood. Any mountain man or foreigner who
+came to town was sure of a welcome from Judge Micah Hollman, who added
+to his title of storekeeper that of magistrate.
+
+As the years went on, the proprietor of the "Mammoth Department Store"
+found that he had money to lend and, as a natural sequence, mortgages
+stored away in his strong box. To the cry of distress, he turned a
+sympathetic ear. His infectious smile and suave manner won him fame as
+"the best-hearted man in the mountains." Steadily and unostentatiously,
+his fortune fattened.
+
+When the railroad came to Hixon, it found in Judge Hollman a "public-
+spirited citizen." Incidentally, the timber that it hauled and the coal
+that its flat cars carried down to the Bluegrass went largely to his
+consignees. He had so astutely anticipated coming events that, when the
+first scouts of capital sought options, they found themselves
+constantly referred to Judge Hollman. No wheel, it seemed, could turn
+without his nod. It was natural that the genial storekeeper should
+become the big man of the community and inevitable that the one big man
+should become the dictator. His inherited place as leader of the
+Hollmans in the feud he had seemingly passed on as an obsolete
+prerogative.
+
+Yet, in business matters, he was found to drive a hard bargain, and
+men came to regard it the part of good policy to meet rather than
+combat his requirements. It was essential to his purposes that the
+officers of the law in his county should be in sympathy with him.
+Sympathy soon became abject subservience. When a South had opposed
+Jesse Purvy in the primary as candidate for High Sheriff, he was found
+one day lying on his face with a bullet-riddled body. It may have been
+a coincidence which pointed to Jim Asberry, the judge's nephew, as the
+assassin. At all events, the judge's nephew was a poor boy, and a
+charitable Grand Jury declined to indict him.
+
+In the course of five years, several South adherents, who had crossed
+Hollman's path, became victims of the laurel ambuscade. The theory of
+coincidence was strained. Slowly, the rumor grew and persistently
+spread, though no man would admit having fathered it, that before each
+of these executions star-chamber conferences had been held in the rooms
+above Micah Hollman's "Mammoth Department Store." It was said that
+these exclusive sessions were attended by Judge Hollman, Sheriff Purvy
+and certain other gentlemen selected by reason of their marksmanship.
+When one of these victims fell, John South had just returned from a law
+school "down below," wearing "fotched-on" clothing and thinking
+"fotched-on" thoughts. He had amazed the community by demanding the
+right to assist in probing and prosecuting the affair. He had then
+shocked the community into complete paralysis by requesting the Grand
+Jury to indict not alone the alleged assassin, but also his employers,
+whom he named as Judge Hollman and Sheriff Purvy. Then, he, too, fell
+under a bolt from the laurel.
+
+That was the first public accusation against the bland capitalist, and
+it carried its own prompt warning against repetition. The Judge's High
+Sheriff and chief ally retired from office, and went abroad only with a
+bodyguard. Jesse Purvy had built his store at a cross roads twenty-five
+miles from the railroad. Like Hollman, he had won a reputation for open
+-handed charity, and was liked--and hated. His friends were legion. His
+enemies were so numerous that he apprehended violence not only from the
+Souths, but also from others who nursed grudges in no way related to
+the line of feud cleavage. The Hollman-Purvy combination had retained
+enough of its old power to escape the law's retribution and to hold its
+dictatorship, but the efforts of John South had not been altogether
+bootless. He had ripped away two masks, and their erstwhile wearers
+could no longer hold their old semblance of law-abiding
+philanthropists. Jesse Purvy's home was the show place of the country
+side. To the traveler's eye, which had grown accustomed to hovel life
+and squalor, it offered a reminder of the richer Bluegrass. Its walls
+were weather-boarded and painted, and its roof two stories high.
+Commodious verandahs looked out over pleasant orchards, and in the same
+enclosure stood the two frame buildings of his store--for he, too,
+combined merchandise with baronial powers. But back of the place rose
+the mountainside, on which Purvy never looked without dread. Twice, its
+impenetrable thickets had spat at him. Twice, he had recovered from
+wounds that would have taken a less-charmed life. And in grisly
+reminder of the terror which clouded the peace of his days stood the
+eight-foot log stockade at the rear of the place which the proprietor
+had built to shield his daily journeys between house and store. But
+Jesse Purvy was not deluded by his escapes. He knew that he was "marked
+down." For years, he had seen men die by his own plotting, and he
+himself must in the end follow by a similar road. Rumor had it that he
+wore a shirt of mail, certain it is that he walked in the expectancy of
+death.
+
+"Why don't you leave the mountains?" strangers had asked; and to each
+of them Purvy had replied with a shrug of his shoulders and a short
+laugh: "This is where I belong."
+
+But the years of strain were telling on Jesse Purvy. The robust, full-
+blooded face was showing deep lines; his flesh was growing flaccid; his
+glance tinged with quick apprehension. He told his intimates that he
+realized "they'd get him," yet he sought to prolong his term of escape.
+
+The creek purled peacefully by the stile; the apple and peach trees
+blossomed and bore fruit at their appointed time, but the householder,
+when he walked between his back door and the back door of the store,
+hugged his stockade, and hurried his steps.
+
+Yesterday morning, Jesse Purvy had risen early as usual, and, after a
+satisfying breakfast, had gone to his store to arrange for the day's
+business. One or two of his henchmen, seeming loafers, but in reality a
+bodyguard, were lounging within call. A married daughter was chatting
+with her father while her young baby played among the barrels and
+cracker boxes.
+
+The daughter went to a rear window, and gazed up at the mountain. The
+cloudless skies were still in hiding behind a curtain of mist. The
+woman was idly watching the vanishing fog wraiths, and her father came
+over to her side. Then, the baby cried, and she stepped back. Purvy
+himself remained at the window. It was a thing he did not often do. It
+left him exposed, but the most cautiously guarded life has its moments
+of relaxed vigilance. He stood there possibly thirty seconds, then a
+sharp fusillade of clear reports barked out and was shattered by the
+hills into a long reverberation. With a hand clasped to his chest,
+Purvy turned, walked to the middle of the floor, and fell.
+
+The henchmen rushed to the open sash. They leaped out, and plunged up
+the mountain, tempting the assassin's fire, but the assassin was
+satisfied. The mountain was again as quiet as it had been at dawn. Its
+impenetrable mask of green was blank and unresponsive. Somewhere in the
+cool of the dewy treetops a squirrel barked. Here and there, the birds
+saluted the sparkle and freshness of June. Inside, at the middle of the
+store, Jesse Purvy shifted his head against his daughter's knee, and
+said, as one stating an expected event:
+
+"Well, they've got me."
+
+An ordinary mountaineer would have been carried home to die in the
+darkness of a dirty and windowless shack. The long-suffering star of
+Jesse Purvy ordained otherwise. He might go under or he might once more
+beat his way back and out of the quicksands of death. At all events, he
+would fight for life to the last gasp.
+
+Twenty miles away in the core of the wilderness, removed from a
+railroad by a score of semi-perpendicular miles, a fanatic had once
+decided to found a school. The fact that the establishment in this
+place of such a school as his mind pictured was sheer madness and
+impossibility did not in the least deter him. It was a thing that could
+not be done, and it was a thing that he had done none the less.
+
+Now a faculty of ten men, like himself holding degrees of Masters of
+Dreams, taught such as cared to come such things as they cared to
+learn. Substantial two-and three-storied buildings of square-hewn logs
+lay grouped in a sort of Arts and Crafts village around a clean-clipped
+campus. The Stagbone College property stretched twenty acres square at
+the foot of a hill. The drone of its own saw-mill came across the
+valley. In a book-lined library, wainscoted in natural woods of three
+colors, the original fanatic often sat reflecting pleasurably on his
+folly. Higher up the hillside stood a small, but model, hospital, with
+a modern operating table and a case of surgical instruments, which, it
+was said, the State could not surpass. These things had been the gifts
+of friends who liked such a type of God-inspired madness. A "fotched-on"
+trained nurse was in attendance. From time to time, eminent Bluegrass
+surgeons came to Hixon by rail, rode twenty miles on mules, and held
+clinics on the mountainside.
+
+To this haven, Jesse Purvy, the murder lord, was borne in a litter
+carried on the shoulders of his dependents. Here, as his steadfast
+guardian star decreed, he found two prominent medical visitors, who
+hurried him to the operating table. Later, he was removed to a white
+bed, with the June sparkle in his eyes, pleasantly modulated through
+drawn blinds, and the June rustle and bird chorus in his ears--and his
+own thoughts in his brain.
+
+Conscious, but in great pain, Purvy beckoned Jim Asberry and Aaron
+Hollis, his chiefs of bodyguard, to his bedside, and waved the nurse
+back out of hearing.
+
+"If I don't get well," he said, feebly, "there's a job for you two
+boys. I reckon you know what it is?"
+
+They nodded, and Asberry whispered a name:
+
+"Samson South?"
+
+"Yes," Purvy spoke in a weak whisper; but the old vindictiveness was
+not smothered. "You got the old man, I reckon you can manage the cub.
+If you don't, he'll get you both one day."
+
+The two henchmen scowled.
+
+"I'll git him to-morrer," growled Asberry. "Thar hain't no sort of use
+in a-waitin'."
+
+"No!" For an instant Purvy's voice rose out of its weakness to its old
+staccato tone of command, a tone which brought obedience. "If I get
+well, I have other plans. Never mind what they are. That's my business.
+If I don't die, leave him alone, until I give other orders." He lay
+back and fought for breath. The nurse came over with gentle insistence,
+ordering quiet, but the man, whose violent life might be closing, had
+business yet to discuss with his confidential vassals. Again, he waved
+her back.
+
+"If I get well," he went on, "and Samson South is killed meanwhile, I
+won't live long either. It would be my life for his. Keep close to him.
+The minute you hear of my death--get him." He paused again, then
+supplemented, "You two will find something mighty interestin' in my
+will."
+
+It was afternoon when Purvy reached the hospital, and, at nightfall of
+the same day, there arrived at his store's entrance, on stumbling, hard
+-ridden mules, several men, followed by two tawny hounds whose long ears
+flapped over their lean jaws, and whose eyes were listless and tired,
+but whose black muzzles wrinkled and sniffed with that sensitive
+instinct which follows the man-scent. The ex-sheriff's family were
+instituting proceedings independent of the Chief's orders. The next
+morning, this party plunged into the mountain tangle, and beat the
+cover with the bloodhounds in leash.
+
+The two gentle-faced dogs picked their way between the flowering
+rhododendrons, the glistening laurels, the feathery pine sprouts and
+the moss-covered rocks. They went gingerly and alertly on ungainly,
+cushioned feet. Just as their masters were despairing, they came to a
+place directly over the store, where a branch had been bent back and
+hitched to clear the outlook, and where a boot heel had crushed the
+moss. There one of them raised his nose high into the air, opened his
+mouth, and let out a long, deep-chested bay of discovery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+George Lescott had known hospitality of many brands and degrees. He
+had been the lionized celebrity in places of fashion. He had been the
+guest of equally famous brother artists in the cities of two
+hemispheres, and, since sincere painting had been his pole-star, he had
+gone where his art's wanderlust beckoned. His most famous canvas,
+perhaps, was his "Prayer Toward Mecca," which hangs in the
+Metropolitan. It shows, with a power that holds the observer in a
+compelling grip, the wonderful colors of a sunset across the desert.
+One seems to feel the renewed life that comes to the caravan with the
+welcome of the oasis. One seems to hear the grunting of the kneeling
+camels and the stirring of the date palms. The Bedouins have spread
+their prayer-rugs, and behind them burns the west. Lescott caught in
+that, as he had caught in his mountain sketches, the broad spirit of
+the thing. To paint that canvas, he had endured days of racking camel
+-travel and burning heat and thirst. He had followed the lure of
+transitory beauty to remote sections of the world. The present trip was
+only one of many like it, which had brought him into touch with varying
+peoples and distinctive types of life. He told himself that never had
+he found men at once so crude and so courteous as these hosts, who,
+facing personal perils, had still time and willingness to regard his
+comfort.
+
+They could not speak grammatically; they could hardly offer him the
+necessities of life, yet they gave all they had, with a touch of
+courtliness.
+
+In a fabric soiled and threadbare, one may sometimes trace the
+tarnished design that erstwhile ran in gold through a rich pattern.
+Lescott could not but think of some fine old growth gone to seed and
+decay, but still bearing at its crest a single beautiful blossom while
+it held in its veins a poison.
+
+Such a blossom was Sally. Her scarlet lips and sweet, grave eyes might
+have been the inheritance gift of some remote ancestress whose feet,
+instead of being bare and brown, had trod in high-heeled, satin
+slippers. When Lord Fairfax governed the Province of Virginia, that
+first Sally, in the stateliness of panniered brocades and powdered
+hair, may have tripped a measure to the harpsichord or spinet. Certain
+it is she trod with no more untrammeled grace than her wild descendant.
+For the nation's most untamed and untaught fragment is, after all, an
+unamalgamated stock of British and Scottish bronze, which now and then
+strikes back to its beginning and sends forth a pure peal from its
+corroded bell-metal. In all America is no other element whose blood is
+so purely what the Nation's was at birth.
+
+The coming of the kinsmen, who would stay until the present danger
+passed, had filled the house. The four beds in the cabin proper were
+full, and some slept on floor mattresses. Lescott, because a guest and
+wounded, was given a small room aside. Samson, however, shared his
+quarters in order to perform any service that an injured man might
+require. It had been a full and unusual day for the painter, and its
+incidents crowded in on him in retrospect and drove off the possibility
+of sleep. Samson, too, seemed wakeful, and in the isolation of the dark
+room the two men fell into conversation, which almost lasted out the
+night. Samson went into the confessional. This was the first human
+being he had ever met to whom he could unburden his soul.
+
+The thirst to taste what knowledge lay beyond the hills; the unnamed
+wanderlust that had at times brought him a restiveness so poignant as
+to be agonizing; the undefined attuning of his heart to the beauty of
+sky and hill; these matters he had hitherto kept locked in guilty
+silence. To the men of his clan these were eccentricities bordering on
+the abnormal; frailties to be passed over with charity, as one would
+pass over the infirmities of an afflicted child. To Samson they looked
+as to a sort of feud Messiah. His destiny was stern, and held no place
+for dreams. For him, they could see only danger in an insatiable hunger
+for learning. In a weak man, a school-teacher or parson sort of a man,
+that might be natural, but this young cock of their walk was being
+reared for the pit--for conflict. What was important in him was
+stamina, and sharp strength of spur. These qualities he had proven from
+infancy. Weakening proclivities must be eliminated.
+
+So, the boy had been forced to keep throttled impulses that, for being
+throttled, had smoldered and set on fire the inner depths of his soul.
+During long nights, he had secretly digested every available book. Yet,
+in order to vindicate himself from the unspoken accusation of growing
+weak, of forgetting his destiny, he had courted trouble, and sought
+combat. He was too close to his people's point of view for perspective.
+He shared their idea that the thinking man weakens himself as a
+fighting man. He had never heard of a Cyrano de Bergerac, or an Aramis.
+Now had come some one with whom he could talk: a man who had traveled
+and followed, without shame, the beckoning of Learning and Beauty. At
+once, the silent boy found himself talking intimately, and the artist
+found himself studying one of the strangest human paradoxes he had yet
+seen.
+
+In a cove, or lowland pocket, stretching into the mountainside, lay
+the small and meager farm of the Widow Miller. The Widow Miller was a
+"South"; that is to say she fell, by tie of marriage, under the
+protection of the clan-head. She lived alone with her fourteen-year-old
+son and her sixteen-year-old daughter. The daughter was Sally. At
+sixteen, the woman's figure had been as pliantly slim, her step as
+light as was her daughter's now. At forty, she was withered. Her face
+was hard, and her lips had forgotten how to smile. Her shoulders
+sagged, and she was an old woman, who smoked her pipe, and taught her
+children that rudimentary code of virtue to which the mountains
+subscribe. She believed in a brimstone hell and a personal devil. She
+believed that the whale had swallowed Jonah, but she thought that "Thou
+shalt not kill" was an edict enunciated by the Almighty with mental
+reservations.
+
+The sun rose on the morning after Lescott arrived, the mists lifted,
+and the cabin of the Widow Miller stood revealed. Against its corners
+several hogs scraped their bristled backs with satisfied grunts. A
+noisy rooster cocked his head inquiringly sidewise before the open
+door, and, hopping up to the sill, invaded the main room. A towsled
+-headed boy made his way to the barn to feed the cattle, and a red patch
+of color, as bright and tuneful as a Kentucky cardinal, appeared at the
+door between the morning-glory vines. The red patch of color was Sally.
+
+She made her way, carrying a bucket, to the spring, where she knelt
+down and gazed at her own image in the water. Her grave lips broke into
+a smile, as the reflected face, framed in its mass of reflected red
+hair, gazed back at her. Then, the smile broke into a laugh.
+
+"Hello, Sally Miller!" she gaily accosted her picture-self. "How air
+ye this mornin', Sally Miller?"
+
+She plunged her face deep in the cool spring, and raised it to shake
+back her hair, until the water flew from its masses. She laughed again,
+because it was another day, and because she was alive. She waded about
+for a while where the spring joined the creek, and delightedly watched
+the schools of tiny, almost transparent, minnows that darted away at
+her coming. Then, standing on a rock, she paused with her head bent,
+and listened until her ears caught the faint tinkle of a cowbell, which
+she recognized. Nodding her head joyously, she went off into the woods,
+to emerge at the end of a half-hour later, carrying a pail of milk, and
+smiling joyously again--because it was almost breakfast time.
+
+But, before going home, she set down her bucket by the stream, and,
+with a quick glance toward the house to make sure that she was not
+observed, climbed through the brush, and was lost to view. She followed
+a path that her own feet had made, and after a steep course upward,
+came upon a bald face of rock, which stood out storm-battered where a
+rift went through the backbone of the ridge. This point of vantage
+commanded the other valley. From its edge, a white oak, dwarfed, but
+patriarchal, leaned out over an abrupt drop. No more sweeping or
+splendid view could be had within miles, but it was not for any reason
+so general that Sally had made her pilgrimage. Down below, across the
+treetops, were a roof and a chimney from which a thread of smoke rose
+in an attenuated shaft. That was Spicer South's house, and Samson's
+home. The girl leaned against the gnarled bowl of the white oak, and
+waved toward the roof and chimney. She cupped her hands, and raised
+them to her lips like one who means to shout across a great distance,
+then she whispered so low that only she herself could hear:
+
+"Hello, Samson South!"
+
+She stood for a space looking down, and forgot to laugh, while her
+eyes grew religiously and softly deep, then, turning, she ran down the
+slope. She had performed her morning devotions.
+
+That day at the house of Spicer South was an off day. The kinsmen who
+had stopped for the night stayed on through the morning. Nothing was
+said of the possibility of trouble. The men talked crops, and tossed
+horseshoes in the yard; but no one went to work in the fields, and all
+remained within easy call. Only young Tamarack Spicer, a raw-boned
+nephew, wore a sullen face, and made a great show of cleaning his rifle
+and pistol. He even went out in the morning, and practised at target
+-shooting, and Lescott, who was still very pale and weak, but able to
+wander about at will, gained the impression that in young Tamarack he
+was seeing the true type of the mountain "bad-man." Tamarack seemed
+willing to feed that idea, and admitted apart to Lescott that, while he
+obeyed the dictates of the truce, he found them galling, and was
+straining at his leash.
+
+"I don't take nothin' offen nobody," he sullenly confided. "The
+Hollmans gives me my half the road."
+
+Shortly after dinner, he disappeared, and, when the afternoon was well
+advanced, Samson, too, with his rifle on his arm, strolled toward the
+stile. Old Spicer South glanced up, and removed his pipe from his mouth
+to inquire:
+
+"Whar be ye a-goin'?"
+
+"I hain't a-goin' fur," was the non-committal response.
+
+"Meybe hit mout be a good idea ter stay round clost fer a spell." The
+old man made the suggestion casually, and the boy replied in the same
+fashion.
+
+"I hain't a-goin' ter be outen sight."
+
+He sauntered down the road, but, when he had passed out of vision, he
+turned sharply into the woods, and began climbing. His steps carried
+him to the rift in the ridge where the white oak stood sentinel over
+the watch-tower of rock. As he came over the edge from one side, his
+bare feet making no sound, he saw Sally sitting there, with her hands
+resting on the moss and her eyes deeply troubled. She was gazing
+fixedly ahead, and her lips were trembling. At once Samson's face grew
+black. Some one had been making Sally unhappy. Then, he saw beyond her
+a standing figure, which the tree trunk had hitherto concealed. It was
+the loose-knitted figure of young Tamarack Spicer.
+
+"In course," Spicer was saying, "we don't 'low Samson shot Jesse
+Purvy, but them Hollmans'll 'spicion him, an' I heered just now, thet
+them dawgs was trackin' straight up hyar from the mouth of Misery.
+They'll git hyar against sundown."
+
+Samson leaped violently forward. With one hand, he roughly seized his
+cousin's shoulder, and wheeled him about.
+
+"Shet up!" he commanded. "What damn fool stuff hev ye been tellin'
+Sally?"
+
+For an instant, the two clansmen stood fronting each other. Samson's
+face was set and wrathful. Tamarack's was surly and snarling. "Hain't I
+got a license ter tell Sally the news?" he demanded.
+
+"Nobody hain't got no license," retorted the younger man in the quiet
+of cold anger, "ter tell Sally nothin' thet'll fret her."
+
+"She air bound ter know, hit all pretty soon. Them dawgs----"
+
+"Didn't I tell ye ter shet up?" Samson clenched his fists, and took a
+step forward. "Ef ye opens yore mouth again, I'm a-goin' ter smash hit.
+Now, git!"
+
+Tamarack Spicer's face blackened, and his teeth showed. His right hand
+swept to his left arm-pit. Outwardly he seemed weaponless, but Samson
+knew that concealed beneath the hickory shirt was a holster, worn
+mountain fashion.
+
+"What air ye a-reachin' atter, Tam'rack?" he inquired, his lips
+twisting in amusement.
+
+"Thet's my business."
+
+"Well, get hit out--or git out yeself, afore I throws ye offen the
+clift."
+
+Sally showed no symptoms of alarm. Her confidence in her hero was
+absolute. The boy lifted his hand, and pointed off down the path.
+Slowly and with incoherent muttering, Spicer took himself away. Then
+only did Sally rise. She came over, and laid a hand on Samson's
+shoulder. In her blue eyes, the tears were welling.
+
+"Samson," she whispered, "ef they're atter ye, come ter my house. I
+kin hide ye out. Why didn't ye tell me Jesse Purvy'd done been shot?"
+
+"Hit tain't nothin' ter fret about, Sally," he assured her. He spoke
+awkwardly, for he had been trained to regard emotion as unmanly. "Thar
+hain't no danger."
+
+She gazed searchingly into his eyes, and then, with a short sob, threw
+her arms around him, and buried her face on his shoulder.
+
+"Ef anything happens ter ye, Samson," she said, brokenly, "hit'll jest
+kill me. I couldn't live withouten ye, Samson. I jest couldn't do hit!"
+
+The boy took her in his arms, and pressed her close. His eyes were
+gazing off over her bent head, and his lips twitched. He drew his
+features into a scowl, because that was the only expression with which
+he could safeguard his feelings. His voice was husky.
+
+"I reckon, Sally," he said, "I couldn't live withouten you, neither."
+
+The party of men who had started at morning from Jesse Purvy's store
+had spent a hard day. The roads followed creek-beds, crossing and
+recrossing waterways in a fashion that gave the bloodhounds a hundred
+baffling difficulties. Often, their noses lost the trail, which had at
+first been so surely taken. Often, they circled and whined, and halted
+in perplexity, but each time they came to a point where, at the end,
+one of them again raised his muzzle skyward, and gave voice.
+
+Toward evening, they were working up Misery along a course less
+broken. The party halted for a moment's rest, and, as the bottle was
+passed, the man from Lexington, who had brought the dogs and stayed to
+conduct the chase, put a question:
+
+"What do you call this creek?"
+
+"Hit's Misery."
+
+"Does anybody live on Misery that--er--that you might suspect?"
+
+The Hollmans laughed.
+
+"This creek is settled with Souths thicker'n hops."
+
+The Lexington man looked up. He knew what the name of South meant to a
+Hollman.
+
+"Is there any special South, who might have a particular grudge?"
+
+"The Souths don't need no partic'lar grudge, but thar's young Samson
+South. He's a wildcat."
+
+"He lives this way?"
+
+"These dogs air a-makin' a bee-line fer his house." Jim Hollman was
+speaking. Then he added: "I've done been told that Samson denies doin'
+the shootin', an' claims he kin prove an alibi."
+
+The Lexington man lighted his pipe, and poured a drink of red whiskey
+into a flask cup.
+
+"He'd be apt to say that," he commented, coolly. "These dogs haven't
+any prejudice in the matter. I'll stake my life on their telling the
+truth."
+
+An hour later, the group halted again. The master of hounds mopped his
+forehead.
+
+"Are we still going toward Samson South's house?" he inquired.
+
+"We're about a quarter from hit now, an' we hain't never varied from
+the straight road."
+
+"Will they be apt to give us trouble?"
+
+Jim Hollman smiled.
+
+"I hain't never heered of no South submittin' ter arrest by a Hollman."
+
+The trailers examined their firearms, and loosened their holster-
+flaps. The dogs went forward at a trot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+From time to time that day, neighbors had ridden up to Spicer South's
+stile, and drawn rein for gossip. These men brought bulletins as to the
+progress of the hounds, and near sundown, as a postscript to their
+information, a volley of gunshot signals sounded from a mountain top.
+No word was spoken, but in common accord the kinsmen rose from their
+chairs, and drifted toward their leaning rifles.
+
+"They're a-comin' hyar," said the head of the house, curtly. "Samson
+ought ter be home. Whar's Tam'-rack?"
+
+No one had noticed his absence until that moment, nor was he to be
+found. A few minutes later, Samson's figure swung into sight, and his
+uncle met him at the fence.
+
+"Samson, I've done asked ye all the questions I'm a-goin' ter ask ye,"
+he said, "but them dawgs is makin' fer this house. They've jest been
+sighted a mile below."
+
+Samson nodded.
+
+"Now"--Spicer South's face hardened--"I owns down thar ter the road.
+No man kin cross that fence withouten I choose ter give him leave. Ef
+ye wants ter go indoors an' stay thar, ye kin do hit--an' no dawg ner
+no man hain't a-goin' ter ask ye no questions. But, ef ye sees fit ter
+face hit out, I'd love ter prove ter these hyar men thet us Souths
+don't break our word. We done agreed ter this truce. I'd like ter
+invite 'em in, an' let them damn dawgs sniff round the feet of every
+man in my house--an' then, when they're plumb teetotally damn
+satisfied, I'd like ter tell 'em all ter go ter hell. Thet's the way I
+feels, but I'm a-goin' ter do jest what ye says."
+
+Lescott did not overhear the conversation in full, but he saw the old
+man's face work with suppressed passion, and he caught Samson's louder
+reply.
+
+"When them folks gets hyar, Uncle Spicer, I'm a-goin' ter be a-settin'
+right out thar in front. I'm plumb willin' ter invite 'em in." Then,
+the two men turned toward the house.
+
+Already the other clansmen had disappeared noiselessly through the
+door or around the angles of the walls. The painter found himself alone
+in a scene of utter quiet, unmarred by any note that was not peaceful.
+He had seen many situations charged with suspense and danger, and he
+now realized how thoroughly freighted was the atmosphere about Spicer
+South's cabin with the possibilities of bloodshed. The moments seemed
+to drag interminably. In the expressionless faces that so quietly
+vanished; in the absolutely calm and businesslike fashion in which,
+with no spoken order, every man fell immediately into his place of
+readiness and concealment, he read an ominous portent that sent a
+current of apprehension through his arteries. Into his mind flashed all
+the historical stories he had heard of the vendetta life of these
+wooded slopes, and he wondered if he was to see another chapter enacted
+in the next few minutes, while the June sun and soft shadows drowsed so
+quietly across the valley.
+
+While he waited, Spicer South's sister, the prematurely aged crone,
+appeared in the kitchen door with the clay pipe between her teeth, and
+raised a shading hand to gaze off up the road. She, too, understood the
+tenseness of the situation as her grim, but unflinching, features
+showed; yet even in her feminine eyes was no shrinking and on her face,
+inured to fear, was no tell-tale signal beyond a heightened pallor.
+
+Spicer South looked up at her, and jerked his head toward the house.
+
+"Git inside, M'lindy," he ordered, curtly, and without a word she,
+too, turned and disappeared.
+
+But there was another figure, unseen, its very presence unsuspected,
+watching from near by with a pounding heart and small fingers clutching
+in wild terror at a palpitant breast. In this country, where human
+creatures seemed to share with the "varmints" the faculty of moving
+unseen and unheard, the figure had come stealthily to watch--and pray.
+
+When Samson had heard that signal of the gunshots from a distant peak,
+he had risen from the rock where he sat with Sally. He had said nothing
+of the issue he must go to meet; nothing of the enemies who had brought
+dogs, confident that they would make their run straight to his lair.
+That subject had not been mentioned between them since he had driven
+Tamarack away that afternoon, and reassured her. He had only risen
+casually, as though his action had no connection with the signal of the
+rifles, and said:
+
+"Reckon I'll be a-goin'."
+
+And Sally had said nothing either, except good-by, and had turned her
+face toward her own side of the ridge, but, as soon as he had passed
+out of sight, she had wheeled and followed noiselessly, slipping from
+rhododendron clump to laurel thicket as stealthily as though she were
+herself the object of an enemy's attack. She knew that Samson would
+have sent her back, and she knew that a crisis was at hand, and that
+she could not support the suspense of awaiting the news. She must see
+for herself.
+
+And now, while the stage was setting itself, the girl crouched
+trembling a little way up the hillside, at the foot of a titanic
+poplar. About her rose gray, moss-covered rocks and the fronds of
+clinging ferns. At her feet bloomed wild flowers for which she knew no
+names except those with which she had herself christened them,
+"sunsetty flowers" whose yellow petals suggested to her imagination the
+western skies, and "fairy cups and saucers."
+
+She was not trembling for herself, though, if a fusillade broke out
+below, the masking screen of leafage would not protect her from the
+pelting of stray bullets. Her small face was pallid, and her blue eyes
+wide-stretched and terrified. With a catch in her throat, she shifted
+from her crouching attitude to a kneeling posture, and clasped her
+hands desperately, and raised her face, while her lips moved in prayer.
+She did not pray aloud, for even in her torment of fear for the boy she
+loved, her mountain caution made her noiseless--and the God to whom she
+prayed could hear her equally well in silence.
+
+"Oh, God," pleaded the girl, brokenly, "I reckon ye knows thet them
+Hollmans is atter Samson, an' I reckons ye knows he hain't committed no
+sin. I reckon ye knows, since ye knows all things, thet hit'll kill me
+ef I loses him, an' though I hain't nobody but jest Sally Miller, an'
+ye air Almighty God, I wants ye ter hear my prayin', an' pertect him."
+
+Fifteen minutes later, Lescott, standing at the fence, saw a strange
+cavalcade round the bend of the road. Several travel-stained men were
+leading mules, and holding two tawny and impatient dogs in leash. In
+their number, the artist recognized his host of two nights ago.
+
+They halted at a distance, and in their faces the artist read dismay,
+for, while the dogs were yelping confidently and tugging at their
+cords, young Samson South--who should, by their prejudiced convictions,
+be hiding out in some secret stronghold--sat at the top step of the
+stile, smoking his pipe, and regarded them with a lack-luster absence
+of interest. Such a calm reception was uncanny. The trailers felt sure
+that in a moment more the dogs would fall into accusing excitement.
+Logically, these men should be waiting to receive them behind
+barricaded doors. There must be some hidden significance. Possibly, it
+was an invitation to walk into ambuscade. No doubt, unseen rifles
+covered their approach, and the shooting of Purvy was only the
+inaugural step to a bloody and open outbreak of the war. After a
+whispered conference, the Lexington man came forward alone. Old Spicer
+South had been looking on from the door, and was now strolling out to
+meet the envoy, unarmed.
+
+And the envoy, as he came, held his hands unnecessarily far away from
+his sides, and walked with an ostentatious show of peace.
+
+"Evenin', stranger," hailed the old man. "Come right in."
+
+"Mr. South," began the dog-owner, with some embarrassment, "I have
+been employed to furnish a pair of bloodhounds to the family of Jesse
+Purvy, who has been shot."
+
+"I heerd tell thet Purvy was shot," said the head of the Souths in an
+affable tone, which betrayed no deeper note of interest than
+neighborhood gossip might have elicited.
+
+"I have no personal interest in the matter," went on the stranger,
+hastily, as one bent on making his attitude clear, "except to supply
+the dogs and manage them. I do not in any way direct their course; I
+merely follow."
+
+"Ye can't hardly fo'ce a dawg." Old Spicer sagely nodded his head as
+he made the remark. "A dawg jest natcher'ly follers his own nose."
+
+"Exactly--and they have followed their noses here." The Lexington man
+found the embarrassment of his position growing as the colloquy
+proceeded. "I want to ask you whether, if these dogs want to cross your
+fence, I have your permission to let them?"
+
+The cabin in the yard was utterly quiet. There was no hint of the
+seven or eight men who rested on their arms behind its half-open door.
+The master of the house crossed the stile, the low sun shining on his
+shock of gray hair, and stood before the man-hunter. He spoke so that
+his voice carried to the waiting group in the road.
+
+"Ye're plumb welcome ter turn them dawgs loose, an' let 'em ramble,
+stranger. Nobody hain't a-goin' ter hurt 'em. I sees some fellers out
+thar with ye thet mustn't cross my fence. Ef they does"--the voice rang
+menacingly--"hit'll mean that they're a-bustin' the truce--an' they
+won't never go out ag'in. But you air safe in hyar. I gives yer my hand
+on thet. Ye're welcome, an' yore dawgs is welcome. I hain't got nothin'
+'gainst dawgs thet comes on four legs, but I shore bars the two-legged
+kind."
+
+There was a murmur of astonishment from the road. Disregarding it,
+Spicer South turned his face toward the house.
+
+"You boys kin come out," he shouted, "an' leave yore guns inside."
+
+The leashes were slipped from the dogs. They leaped forward, and made
+directly for Samson, who sat as unmoving as a lifeless image on the top
+step of the stile. Up on the hillside the fingernails of Sally Miller's
+clenched hands cut into the flesh, and the breath stopped between her
+parted and bloodless lips. There was a half-moment of terrific
+suspense, then the beasts clambered by the seated figure, passing on
+each side and circled aimlessly about the yard--their quest unended.
+They sniffed indifferently about the trouser legs of the men who
+sauntered indolently out of the door. They trotted into the house and
+out again, and mingled with the mongrel home pack that snarled and
+growled hostility for this invasion. Then, they came once more to the
+stile. As they climbed out, Samson South reached up and stroked a tawny
+head, and the bloodhound paused a moment to wag its tail in friendship,
+before it jumped down to the road, and trotted gingerly onward.
+
+"I'm obliged to you, sir," said the man from the Bluegrass, with a
+voice of immense relief.
+
+The moment of suspense seemed past, and, in the relief of the averted
+clash, the master of hounds forgot that his dogs stood branded as false
+trailers. But, when he rejoined the group in the road, he found himself
+looking into surly visages, and the features of Jim Hollman in
+particular were black in their scowl of smoldering wrath.
+
+"Why didn't ye axe him," growled the kinsman of the man who had been
+shot, "whar the other feller's at?"
+
+"What other fellow?" echoed the Lexington man.
+
+Jim Hollman's voice rose truculently, and his words drifted, as he
+meant them to, across to the ears of the clansmen who stood in the yard
+of Spicer South.
+
+"Them dawgs of your'n come up Misery a-hellin'. They hain't never
+turned aside, an', onless they're plumb ornery no-'count curs thet
+don't know their business, they come for some reason. They seemed
+mighty interested in gittin' hyar. Axe them fellers in thar who's been
+hyar thet hain't hyar now? Who is ther feller thet got out afore we
+come hyar."
+
+At this veiled charge of deceit, the faces of the Souths again
+blackened, and the men near the door of the house drifted in to drift
+presently out again, swinging discarded Winchesters at their sides. It
+seemed that, after all, the incident was not closed. The man from
+Lexington, finding himself face to face with a new difficulty, turned
+and argued in a low voice with the Hollman leader. But Jim Hollman,
+whose eyes were fixed on Samson, refused to talk in a modulated tone,
+and he shouted his reply:
+
+"I hain't got nothin' ter whisper about," he proclaimed. "Go axe 'em
+who hit war thet got away from hyar."
+
+Old Spicer South stood leaning on his fence, and his rugged
+countenance stiffened. He started to speak, but Samson rose from the
+stile, and said, in a composed voice:
+
+"Let me talk ter this feller, Unc' Spicer." The old man nodded, and
+Samson beckoned to the owner of the dogs.
+
+"We hain't got nothin' ter say ter them fellers with ye," he
+announced, briefly. "We hain't axin' 'em no questions, an' we hain't
+answerin' none. Ye done come hyar with dawgs, an' we hain't stopped ye.
+We've done answered all the questions them dawgs hes axed. We done
+treated you an' yore houn's plumb friendly. Es fer them other men, we
+hain't got nothin' ter say ter 'em. They done come hyar because they
+hoped they could git me in trouble. They done failed. Thet road belongs
+ter the county. They got a license ter travel hit, but this strip right
+hyar hain't ther healthiest section they kin find. I reckon ye'd better
+advise 'em ter move on."
+
+The Lexington man went back. For a minute or two, Jim Hollman sat
+scowling down in indecision from his saddle. Then, he admitted to
+himself that he had done all he could do without becoming the
+aggressor. For the moment, he was beaten. He looked up, and from the
+road one of the hounds raised its voice and gave cry. That baying
+afforded an excuse for leaving, and Jim Hollman seized upon it.
+
+"Go on," he growled. "Let's see what them damned curs hes ter say now."
+
+Mounting, they kicked their mules into a jog. From the men inside the
+fence came no note of derision; no hint of triumph. They stood looking
+out with expressionless, mask-like faces until their enemies had passed
+out of sight around the shoulder of the mountain. The Souths had met
+and fronted an accusation made after the enemy's own choice and method.
+A jury of two hounds had acquitted them. It was not only because the
+dogs had refused to recognize in Samson a suspicious character that the
+enemy rode on grudgingly convinced, but, also, because the family,
+which had invariably met hostility with hostility, had so willingly
+courted the acid test of guilt or innocence.
+
+Samson, passing around the corner of the house, caught a flash of red
+up among the green clumps of the mountainside, and, pausing to gaze at
+it, saw it disappear into the thicket of brush. He knew then that Sally
+had followed him, and why she had done it, and, framing a stern rebuke
+for the foolhardiness of the venture, he plunged up the acclivity in
+pursuit. But, as he made his way cautiously, he heard around the
+shoulder of a mass of piled-up sandstone a shaken sobbing, and,
+slipping toward it, found the girl bent over with her face in her
+hands, her slander body convulsively heaving with the weeping of
+reaction, and murmuring half-incoherent prayers of thanksgiving for his
+deliverance.
+
+"Sally!" he exclaimed, hurrying over and dropping to his knees beside
+her. "Sally, thar hain't nothin' ter fret about, little gal. Hit's all
+right."
+
+She started up at the sound of his voice, and then, pillowing her head
+on his shoulder, wept tears of happiness. He sought for words, but no
+words came, and his lips and eyes, unused to soft expressions, drew
+themselves once more into the hard mask with which he screened his
+heart's moods.
+
+Days passed uneventfully after that. The kinsmen dispersed to their
+scattered coves and cabins. Now and again came a rumor that Jesse Purvy
+was dying, but always hard on its heels came another to the effect that
+the obdurate fighter had rallied, though the doctors held out small
+encouragement of recovery.
+
+One day Lescott, whose bandaged arm gave him much pain, but who was
+able to get about, was strolling not far from the house with Samson.
+They were following a narrow trail along the mountainside, and, at a
+sound no louder than the falling of a walnut, the boy halted and laid a
+silencing hand on the painter's shoulder. Then followed an unspoken
+command in his companion's eyes. Lescott sank down behind a rock,
+cloaked with glistening rhododendron leafage, where Samson had already
+crouched, and become immovable and noiseless. They had been there only
+a short time when they saw another figure slipping quietly from tree to
+tree below them.
+
+For a time, the mountain boy watched the figure, and the painter saw
+his lips draw into a straight line, and his eyes narrow with a glint of
+tense hate. Yet, a moment later, with a nod to follow, the boy
+unexpectedly rose into view, and his features were absolutely
+expressionless.
+
+"Mornin', Jim," he called.
+
+The slinking stranger whirled with a start, and an instinctive motion
+as though to bring his rifle to his shoulder. But, seeing Samson's
+peaceable manner, he smiled, and his own demeanor became friendly.
+
+"Mornin', Samson."
+
+"Kinder stranger in this country, hain't ye, Jim?" drawled the boy who
+lived there, and the question brought a sullen flush to the other's
+cheekbones.
+
+"Jest a-passin' through," he vouchsafed.
+
+"I reckon ye'd find the wagon road more handy," suggested Samson.
+"Some folks might 'spicion ye fer stealin' long through the timber."
+
+The skulking traveler decided to lie plausibly. He laughed
+mendaciously. "That's the reason, Samson. I was kinder skeered ter go
+through this country in the open."
+
+Samson met his eye steadily, and said slowly:
+
+"I reckon, Jim, hit moughtn't be half es risky fer ye ter walk
+upstandin' along Misery, es ter go a-crouchin'. Ye thinks ye've been a
+shadderin' me. I knows jest whar ye've been all the time. Ye lies when
+ye talks 'bout passin' through. Ye've done been spyin' hyar, ever since
+Jesse Purvy got shot, an' all thet time ye've done been watched yeself.
+I reckon hit'll be healthier fer ye ter do yore spyin' from t'other
+side of the ridge. I reckon yer allowin' ter git me ef Purvy dies, but
+we're watchin' ye."
+
+Jim Asberry's face darkened, but he said nothing. There was nothing to
+say. He was discovered in the enemy's country, and must accept the
+enemy's terms.
+
+"This hyar time, I lets ye go back," said Samson, "fer the reason thet
+I'm tryin' like all hell ter keep this truce. But ye must stay on yore
+side, or else ride the roads open. How is Purvy terday?"
+
+"He's mighty porely," replied the other, in a sullen voice.
+
+"All right. Thet's another reason why hit hain't healthy fer ye over
+hyar."
+
+The spy turned, and made his way over the mountain.
+
+"Damn him!" muttered Samson, his face twitching, as the other was lost
+in the undergrowth. "Some day I'm a-goin' ter git him."
+
+Tamarack Spicer did not at once reappear, and, when one of the Souths
+met another in the road, the customary dialogue would be: "Heered
+anything of Tamarack?" ... "No, hev you?" ... "No, nary a word."
+
+As Lescott wandered through the hills, his unhurt right hand began
+crying out for action and a brush to nurse. As he watched, day after
+day, the unveiling of the monumental hills, and the transitions from
+hazy wraith-like whispers of hues, to strong, flaring riot of color,
+this fret of restlessness became actual pain. He was wasting wonderful
+opportunity and the creative instinct in him was clamoring.
+
+One morning, when he came out just after sunrise to the tin wash basin
+at the well, the desire to paint was on him with compelling force. The
+hills ended near their bases like things bitten off. Beyond lay
+limitless streamers of mist, but, while he stood at gaze, the filmy
+veil began to lift and float higher. Trees and mountains grew taller.
+The sun, which showed first as a ghost-like disc of polished aluminum,
+struggled through orange and vermilion into a sphere of living flame.
+It was as though the Creator were breathing on a formless void to
+kindle it into a vital and splendid cosmos, and between the dawn's fog
+and the radiance of full day lay a dozen miracles. Through rifts in the
+streamers, patches of hillside and sky showed for an ethereal moment or
+two in tender and transparent coloration, like spirit-reflections of
+emerald and sapphire.... Lescott heard a voice at his side.
+
+"When does ye 'low ter commence paintin'?"
+
+It was Samson. For answer, the artist, with his unhurt hand,
+impatiently tapped his bandaged wrist.
+
+"Ye still got yore right hand, hain't ye?" demanded the boy. The other
+laughed. It was a typical question. So long as one had the trigger
+finger left, one should not admit disqualification.
+
+"You see, Samson," he explained, "this isn't precisely like handling a
+gun. One must hold the palette; mix the colors; wipe the brushes and do
+half a dozen equally necessary things. It requires at least two
+perfectly good hands. Many people don't find two enough."
+
+"But hit only takes one ter do the paintin', don't hit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well"--the boy spoke diffidently but with enthusiasm--"between the
+two of us, we've got three hands. I reckon ye kin larn me how ter do
+them other things fer ye."
+
+Lescott's surprise showed in his face, and the lad swept eagerly on.
+
+"Mebby hit hain't none of my business, but, all day yestiddy an' the
+day befo', I was a-studyin' 'bout this here thing, an' I hustled up an'
+got thet corn weeded, an' now I'm through. Ef I kin help ye out, I
+thought mebby--" He paused, and looked appealingly at the artist.
+
+Lescott whistled, and then his face lighted into contentment.
+
+"To-day, Samson," he announced, "Lescott, South and Company get busy."
+
+It was the first time he had seen Samson smile, and, although the
+expression was one of sheer delight, inherent somberness loaned it a
+touch of the wistful.
+
+When, an hour later, the two set out, the mountain boy carried the
+paraphernalia, and the old man standing at the door watched them off
+with a half-quizzical, half-disapproving glance. To interfere with any
+act of courtesy to a guest was not to be thought of, but already the
+influence on Samson of this man from the other world was disquieting
+his uncle's thoughts. With his mother's milk, the boy had fed on hatred
+of his enemies. With his training, he had been reared to feudal
+animosities. Disaffection might ruin his usefulness. Besides the
+sketching outfit, Samson carried his rifle. He led the painter by slow
+stages, since the climb proved hard for a man still somewhat enfeebled,
+to the high rock which Sally visited each morning.
+
+As the boy, with remarkable aptitude, learned how to adjust the easel
+and arrange the paraphernalia, Lescott sat drinking in through thirsty
+eyes the stretch of landscape he had determined to paint.
+
+It was his custom to look long and studiously through closed lashes
+before he took up his brush. After that he began laying in his key
+tones and his fundamental sketching with an incredible swiftness,
+having already solved his problems of composition and analysis.
+
+Then, while he painted, the boy held the palette, his eyes riveted on
+the canvas, which was growing from a blank to a mirror of vistas--and
+the boy's pupils became deeply hungry. He was not only looking. He was
+seeing. His gaze took in the way the fingers held the brushes; the
+manner of mixing the pigments, the detail of method. Sometimes, when he
+saw a brush dab into a color whose use he did not at once understand,
+he would catch his breath anxiously, then nod silently to himself as
+the blending vindicated the choice. He did not know it, but his eye for
+color was as instinctively true as that of the master.
+
+As the day wore on, they fell to talking, and the boy again found
+himself speaking of his fettered restiveness in the confinement of his
+life; of the wanderlust which stirred him, and of which he had been
+taught to feel ashamed.
+
+During one of their periods of rest, there was a rustle in the
+branches of a hickory, and a gray shape flirted a bushy tail. Samson's
+hand slipped silently out, and the rifle came to his shoulder. In a
+moment it snapped, and a squirrel dropped through the leaves.
+
+"Jove!" exclaimed Lescott, admiringly. "That was neat work. He was
+partly behind the limb--at a hundred yards."
+
+"Hit warn't nothin'," said Samson, modestly. "Hit's a good gun." He
+brought back his quarry, and affectionately picked up the rifle. It was
+a repeating Winchester, carrying a long steel-jacketed bullet of
+special caliber, but it was of a pattern fifteen years old, and fitted
+with target sights.
+
+"That gun," Samson explained, in a lowered and reverent voice, "was my
+pap's. I reckon there hain't enough money in the world ter buy hit off
+en me."
+
+Slowly, in a matter-of-fact tone, he began a story without decoration
+of verbiage--straightforward and tense in its simplicity. As the
+painter listened, he began to understand; the gall that had crept into
+this lad's blood before his weaning became comprehensible.... Killing
+Hollmans was not murder.... It was duty. He seemed to see the smoke-
+blackened cabin and the mother of the boy sitting, with drawn face, in
+dread of the hours. He felt the racking nerve-tension of a life in
+which the father went forth each day leaving his family in fear that he
+would not return. Then, under the spell of the unvarnished recital, he
+seemed to witness the crisis when the man, who had dared repudiate the
+lawless law of individual reprisal, paid the price of his insurgency.
+
+A solitary friend had come in advance to break the news. His face,
+when he awkwardly commenced to speak, made it unnecessary to put the
+story into words. Samson told how his mother had turned pallid, and
+stretched out her arm gropingly for support against the door-jamb. Then
+the man had found his voice with clumsy directness.
+
+"They've got him."
+
+The small boy had reached her in time to break her fall as she
+fainted, but, later, when they brought in the limp, unconscious man,
+she was awaiting them with regained composure. An expression came to
+her face at that moment, said the lad, which had never left it during
+the remaining two years of her life. For some hours, "old" Henry South,
+who in a less-wasting life would hardly have been middle-aged, had
+lingered. They were hours of conscious suffering, with no power to
+speak, but before he died he had beckoned his ten-year-old son to his
+bedside, and laid a hand on the dark, rumpled hair. The boy bent
+forward, his eyes tortured and tearless, and his little lips tight
+pressed. The old man patted the head, and made a feeble gesture toward
+the mother who was to be widowed. Samson had nodded.
+
+"I'll take keer of her, pap," he had fervently sworn.
+
+Then, Henry South had lifted a tremulous finger, and pointed to the
+wall above the hearth. There, upon a set of buck-antlers, hung the
+Winchester rifle. And, again, Samson had nodded, but this time he did
+not speak. That moment was to his mind the most sacred of his life; it
+had been a dedication to a purpose. The arms of the father had then and
+there been bequeathed to the son, and with the arms a mission for their
+use. After a brief pause, Samson told of the funeral. He had a
+remarkable way of visualizing in rough speech the desolate picture; the
+wailing mourners on the bleak hillside, with the November clouds
+hanging low and trailing their wet streamers. A "jolt-wagon" had
+carried the coffin in lieu of a hearse. Saddled mules stood tethered
+against the picket fence. The dogs that had followed their masters
+started a rabbit close by the open grave, and split the silence with
+their yelps as the first clod fell. He recalled, too, the bitter voice
+with which his mother had spoken to a kinsman as she turned from the
+ragged burying ground, where only the forlorn cedars were green. She
+was leaning on the boy's thin shoulders at the moment. He had felt her
+arm stiffen with her words, and, as her arm stiffened, his own positive
+nature stiffened with it.
+
+"Henry believed in law and order. I did, too. But they wouldn't let us
+have it that way. From this day on, I'm a-goin' to raise my boy to kill
+Hollmans."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+With his father's death Samson's schooling had ended. His
+responsibility now was farm work and the roughly tender solicitude of a
+young stoic for his mother. His evenings before the broad fireplace he
+gave up to a devouring sort of study, but his books were few.
+
+When, two years later, he laid the body of the Widow South beside that
+of his father in the ragged hillside burying-ground, he turned his
+nag's head away from the cabin where he had been born, and rode over to
+make his home at his Uncle Spicer's place. He had, in mountain
+parlance, "heired" a farm of four hundred acres, but a boy of twelve
+can hardly operate a farm, even if he be so stalwart a boy as Samson.
+His Uncle Spicer wanted him, and he went, and the head of the family
+took charge of his property as guardian; placed a kinsman there to till
+it, on shares, and faithfully set aside for the boy what revenue came
+from the stony acres. He knew that they would be rich acres when men
+began to dig deeper than the hoe could scratch, and opened the veins
+where the coal slept its unstirring sleep. The old man had not set such
+store by learning as had Samson's father, and the little shaver's
+education ended, except for what he could wrest from stinted sources
+and without aid. His mission of "killing Hollmans" was not forgotten.
+There had years ago been one general battle at a primary, when the two
+factions fought for the control that would insure the victors safety
+against "law trouble," and put into their hands the weapons of the
+courts.
+
+Samson was far too young to vote, but he was old enough to fight, and
+the account he had given of himself, with the inherited rifle smoking,
+gave augury of fighting effectiveness. So sanguinary had been this
+fight, and so dangerously had it focused upon the warring clans the
+attention of the outside world, that after its indecisive termination,
+they made the compact of the present truce. By its terms, the Hollmans
+held their civil authority, and the Souths were to be undisturbed
+dictators beyond Misery. For some years now, the peace had been
+unbroken save by sporadic assassinations, none of which could be
+specifically enough charged to the feud account to warrant either side
+in regarding the contract as broken. Samson, being a child, had been
+forced to accept the terms of this peace bondage. The day would come
+when the Souths could agree to no truce without his consent. Such was,
+in brief, the story that the artist heard while he painted and rested
+that day on the rock. Had he heard it in New York, he would have
+discounted it as improbable and melodramatic. Now, he knew that it was
+only one of many such chapters in the history of the Cumberlands. The
+native point of view even became in a degree acceptable. In a system of
+trial by juries from the vicinage, fair and bold prosecutions for crime
+were impossible, and such as pretended to be so were bitterly tragic
+farces. He understood why the families of murdered fathers and brothers
+preferred to leave the punishment to their kinsmen in the laurel,
+rather than to their enemies in the jury-box.
+
+The day of painting was followed by others like it. The disabling of
+Lescott's left hand made the constant companionship of the boy a matter
+that needed no explanation or apology, though not a matter of approval
+to his uncle.
+
+Another week had passed without the reappearance of Tamarack Spicer.
+
+One afternoon, Lescott and Samson were alone on a cliff-protected
+shelf, and the painter had just blocked in with umber and neutral tint
+the crude sketch of his next picture. In the foreground was a steep
+wall, rising palisade-like from the water below. A kingly spruce-pine
+gave the near note for a perspective which went away across a valley of
+cornfields to heaping and distant mountains. Beyond that range, in a
+slender ribbon of pale purple, one saw the ridge of a more remote and
+mightier chain.
+
+The two men had lost an hour huddled under a canopy beneath the
+cannonading of a sudden storm. They had silently watched titanic
+battallions of thunder-clouds riding the skies in gusty puffs of gale,
+and raking the earth with lightning and hail and water. The crags had
+roared back echoing defiance, and the great trees had lashed and bent
+and tossed like weeds in the buffeting. Every gully had become a
+stream, and every gulch-rock a waterfall. Here and there had been a
+crashing of spent timber, and now the sun had burst through a rift in
+the west, and flooded a segment of the horizon with a strange, luminous
+field of lesson. About this zone of clarity were heaped masses of gold-
+rimmed and rose-edged clouds, still inky at their centers.
+
+"My God!" exclaimed the mountain boy abruptly. "I'd give 'most
+anything ef I could paint that."
+
+Lescott rose smilingly from his seat before the easel, and surrendered
+his palette and sheaf of brushes.
+
+"Try it," he invited.
+
+For a moment, Samson stood hesitant and overcome with diffidence;
+then, with set lips, he took his place, and experimentally fitted his
+fingers about a brush, as he had seen Lescott do. He asked no advice.
+He merely gazed for awhile, and then, dipping a brush and experimenting
+for his color, went to sweeping in his primary tones.
+
+The painter stood at his back, still smiling. Of course, the brush-
+stroke was that of the novice. Of course, the work was clumsy and
+heavy. But what Lescott noticed was not so much the things that went on
+canvas as the mixing of colors on the palette, for he knew that the
+palette is the painter's heart, and its colors are the elements of his
+soul. What a man paints on canvas is the sum of his acquirement; but
+the colors he mixes are the declarations of what his soul can see, and
+no man can paint whose eyes are not touched with the sublime. At that
+moment, Lescott knew that Samson had such eyes.
+
+The splashes of lemon yellow that the boy daubed above the hills might
+have been painted with a brush dipped in the sunset. The heavy clouds
+with their gossamer edgings had truth of tone and color. Then the
+experimenter came to the purple rim of mountain tops.
+
+There was no color for that on the palette, and he turned to the paint-
+box.
+
+"Here," suggested Lescott, handing him a tube of Payne's Gray: "is
+that what you're looking for?"
+
+Samson read the label, and decisively shook his head.
+
+"I'm a-goin' atter them hills," he declared. "There hain't no gray in
+them thar mountings."
+
+"Squeeze some out, anyway." The artist suited the action to the word,
+and soon Samson was experimenting with a mixture.
+
+"Why, that hain't no gray," he announced, with enthusiasm; "that
+thar's sort of ashy purple." Still, he was not satisfied. His first
+brush-stroke showed a trifle dead and heavy. It lacked the soft lucid
+quality that the hills held, though it was close enough to truth to
+have satisfied any eye save one of uncompromising sincerity. Samson,
+even though he was hopelessly daubing, and knew it, was sincere, and
+the painter at his elbow caught his breath, and looked on with the
+absorption of a prophet, who, listening to childish prattle, yet
+recognizes the gift of prophecy. The boy dabbled for a perplexed moment
+among the pigments, then lightened up his color with a trace of
+ultramarine. Unconsciously, the master heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
+The boy "laid in" his far hills, and turned.
+
+"Thet's the way hit looks ter me," he said, simply.
+
+"That's the way it is," commended his critic.
+
+For a while more, Samson worked at the nearer hills, then he rose.
+
+"I'm done," he said. "I hain't a-goin' ter fool with them thar trees
+an' things. I don't know nothing erbout thet. I can't paint leaves an'
+twigs an' birdsnests. What I likes is mountings, an' skies, an' sech-
+like things."
+
+Lescott looked at the daub before him. A less-trained eye would have
+seen only the daub, just as a poor judge of horse-flesh might see only
+awkward joints and long legs in a weanling colt, though it be bred in
+the purple.
+
+"Samson," he said, earnestly, "that's all there is to art. It's the
+power to feel the poetry of color. The rest can be taught. The genius
+must work, of course--work, work, work, and still work, but the Gift is
+the power of seeing true--and, by God, boy, you have it."
+
+His words rang exultantly.
+
+"Anybody with eyes kin see," deprecated Samson, wiping his fingers on
+his jeans trousers.
+
+"You think so? To the seer who reads the passing shapes in a globe of
+crystal, it's plain enough. To any other eye, there is nothing there
+but transparency." Lescott halted, conscious that he was falling into
+metaphor which his companion could not understand, then more quietly he
+went on: "I don't know how you would progress, Samson, in detail and
+technique, but I know you've got what many men have struggled a
+lifetime for, and failed. I'd like to have you study with me. I'd like
+to be your discoverer. Look here."
+
+The painter sat down, and speedily went to work. He painted out
+nothing. He simply toned, and, with precisely the right touch here and
+there, softened the crudeness, laid stress on the contrast, melted the
+harshness, and, when he rose, he had built, upon the rough cornerstone
+of Samson's laying, a picture.
+
+"That proves it," he said. "I had only to finish. I didn't have to
+undo. Boy, you're wasting yourself. Come with me, and let me make you.
+We all pretend there is no such thing, in these days, as sheer genius;
+but, deep down, we know that, unless there is, there can be no such
+thing as true art. There is genius and you have it." Enthusiasm was
+again sweeping him into an unintended outburst.
+
+The boy stood silent. Across his countenance swept a conflict of
+emotions. He looked away, as if taking counsel with the hills.
+
+"It's what I'm a-honin' fer," he admitted at last. "Hit's what I'd
+give half my life fer.... I mout sell my land, an' raise the money....
+I reckon hit would take passels of money, wouldn't hit?" He paused, and
+his eyes fell on the rifle leaning against the tree. His lips tightened
+in sudden remembrance. He went over and picked up the gun, and, as he
+did so, he shook his head.
+
+"No," he stolidly declared; "every man to his own tools. This here's
+mine."
+
+Yet, when they were again out sketching, the temptation to play with
+brushes once more seized him, and he took his place before the easel.
+Neither he nor Lescott noticed a man who crept down through the timber,
+and for a time watched them. The man's face wore a surly, contemptuous
+grin, and shortly it withdrew.
+
+But, an hour later, while the boy was still working industriously and
+the artist was lying on his back, with a pipe between his teeth, and his
+half-closed eyes gazing up contentedly through the green of overhead
+branches, their peace was broken by a guffaw of derisive laughter. They
+looked up, to find at their backs a semi-circle of scoffing humanity.
+Lescott's impulse was to laugh, for only the comedy of the situation at
+the moment struck him. A stage director, setting a comedy scene with
+that most ancient of jests, the gawking of boobs at some new sight,
+could hardly have improved on this tableau. At the front stood Tamarack
+Spicer, the returned wanderer. His lean wrist was stretched out of a
+ragged sleeve all too short, and his tattered "jimmy" was shoved back
+over a face all a-grin. His eyes were blood-shot with recent drinking,
+but his manner was in exaggerated and cumbersome imitation of a rural
+master of ceremonies. At his back were the raw-boned men and women and
+children of the hills, to the number of a dozen. To the front shuffled
+an old, half-witted hag, with thin gray hair and pendulous lower lip.
+Her dress was patched and colorless. Her back was bent with age and
+rheumatism. Her feet were incased in a pair of man's brogans. She stared
+and snickered, and several children, taking the cue, giggled, but the
+men, save Tamarack himself, wore troubled faces, as though recognizing
+that their future chieftain had been discovered in some secret shame.
+They were looking on their idol's feet of clay.
+
+"Ladies and gentle-_men_," announced Tamarack Spicer, in a
+hiccoughy voice, "swing yo' partners an' sashay forward. See the only
+son of the late Henry South engaged in his mar-ve-lous an' heretofore
+undiscovered occupation of doin' fancy work. Ladies and gentle-_men_,
+after this here show is conclooded, keep your seats for the concert
+in the main tent. This here famous performer will favor ye with a little
+exhibition of plain an' fancy sock-darnin'."
+
+The children snickered again. The old woman shuffled forward.
+
+"Samson," she quavered, "I didn't never low ter see ye doin' no sich
+woman's work as thet."
+
+After the first surprise, Samson had turned his back on the group. He
+was mixing paint at the time and he proceeded to experiment with a
+fleeting cloud effect, which would not outlast the moment. He finished
+that, and, reaching for the palette-knife, scraped his fingers and
+wiped them on his trousers' legs. Then, he deliberately rose.
+
+Without a word he turned. Tamarack had begun his harangue afresh. The
+boy tossed back the long lock from his forehead, and then, with an
+unexpectedly swift movement, crouched and leaped. His right fist shot
+forward to Tamarack Spicer's chattering lips, and they abruptly ceased
+to chatter as the teeth were driven into their flesh. Spicer's head
+snapped back, and he staggered against the onlookers, where he stood
+rocking on his unsteady legs. His hand swept instinctively to the shirt
+-concealed holster, but, before it had connected, both of Samson's fists
+were playing a terrific tattoo on his face. The inglorious master of
+the show dropped, and lay groggily trying to rise.
+
+The laughter died as suddenly as Tamarack's speech. Samson stepped
+back again, and searched the faces of the group for any lingering sign
+of mirth or criticism. There was none. Every countenance was sober and
+expressionless, but the boy felt a weight of unuttered disapproval, and
+he glared defiance. One of the older onlookers spoke up reproachfully.
+
+"Samson, ye hadn't hardly ought ter a-done that. He was jest a funnin'
+with ye."
+
+"Git him up on his feet. I've got somethin' ter say ter him." The
+boy's voice was dangerously quiet. It was his first word. They lifted
+the fallen cousin, whose entertainment had gone astray, and led him
+forward grumbling, threatening and sputtering, but evincing no
+immediate desire to renew hostilities.
+
+"Whar hev ye been?" demanded Samson.
+
+"Thet's my business," came the familiar mountain phrase.
+
+"Why wasn't yer hyar when them dawgs come by? Why was ye the only
+South thet runned away, when they was smellin' round fer Jesse Purvy's
+assassin?"
+
+"I didn't run away." Tamarack's blood-shot eyes flared wickedly. "I
+knowed thet ef I stayed 'round hyar with them damned Hollmans stickin'
+their noses inter our business, I'd hurt somebody. So, I went over
+inter the next county fer a spell. You fellers mout be able to take
+things offen the Hollmans, but I hain't."
+
+"Thet's a damned lie," said Samson, quietly. "Ye runned away, an' ye
+runned in the water so them dawgs couldn't trail ye--ye done hit
+because ye shot them shoots at Jesse Purvy from the laurel--because
+ye're a truce-bustin', murderin' bully thet shoots off his face, an' is
+skeered to fight." Samson paused for breath, and went on with regained
+calmness. "I've knowed all along ye was the man, an' I've kept quiet
+because ye're 'my kin. If ye've got anything else ter say, say hit.
+But, ef I ever ketches yer talkin' about me, or talkin' ter Sally, I'm
+a-goin' ter take ye by the scruff of the neck, an' drag ye plumb inter
+Hixon, an' stick ye in the jail-house. An' I'm a-goin' ter tell the
+High Sheriff that the Souths spits ye outen their mouths. Take him
+away." The crowd turned and left the place. When they were gone, Samson
+seated himself at his easel again, and picked up his palette.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Lescott had come to the mountains anticipating a visit of two weeks.
+His accident had resolved him to shorten it to the nearest day upon
+which he felt capable of making the trip out to the railroad. Yet, June
+had ended; July had burned the slopes from emerald to russet-green;
+August had brought purple tops to the ironweed, and still he found
+himself lingering. And this was true although he recognized a growing
+sentiment of disapproval for himself. He knew indubitably that he stood
+charged with the offense for which Socrates was invited to drink the
+hemlock: "corrupting the morals of the youth, and teaching strange
+gods." Feeling the virtue of his teaching, he was unwilling as Socrates
+to abandon the field. In Samson he thought he recognized twin gifts: a
+spark of a genius too rare to be allowed to flicker out, and a
+potentiality for constructive work among his own people, which needed
+for its perfecting only education and experience. Having aroused a
+soul's restiveness in the boy, he felt a direct responsibility for it
+and him, to which he added a deep personal regard. Though the kinsmen
+looked upon him as an undesirable citizen, bringing teachings which
+they despised, the hospitality of old Spicer South continued unbroken
+and a guarantee of security on Misery.
+
+"Samson," he suggested one day when they were alone, "I want you to
+come East. You say that gun is your tool, and that each man must stick
+to his own. You are in part right, in part wrong. A mail uses any tool
+better for understanding other tools. You have the right to use your
+brains and talents to the full."
+
+The boy's face was somber in the intensity of his mental struggle, and
+his answer had that sullen ring which was not really sullenness at all,
+but self-repression.
+
+"I reckon a feller's biggest right is to stand by his kinfolks. Unc'
+Spicer's gittin' old. He's done been good ter me. He needs me here."
+
+"I appreciate that. He will be older later. You can go now, and come
+back to him when he needs you more. If what I urged meant disloyalty to
+your people, I would cut out my tongue before I argued for it. You must
+believe me in that. I want you to be in the fullest sense your people's
+leader. I want you to be not only their Samson--but their Moses."
+
+The boy looked up and nodded. The mountaineer is not given to
+demonstration. He rarely shakes hands, and he does not indulge in
+superlatives of affection. He loved and admired this man from the
+outside world, who seemed to him to epitomize wisdom, but his code did
+not permit him to say so.
+
+"I reckon ye aims ter be friendly, all right," was his conservative
+response.
+
+The painter went on earnestly:
+
+"I realize that I am urging things of which your people disapprove,
+but it is only because they misunderstand that they do disapprove. They
+are too close, Samson, to see the purple that mountains have when they
+are far away. I want you to go where you can see the purple. If you are
+the sort of man I think, you won't be beguiled. You won't lose your
+loyalty. You won't be ashamed of your people."
+
+"I reckon I wouldn't be ashamed," said the youth. "I reckon there
+hain't no better folks nowhar."
+
+"I'm sure of it. There are going to be sweeping changes in these
+mountains. Conditions here have stood as immutably changeless as the
+hills themselves for a hundred years. That day is at its twilight. I
+tell you, I know what I'm talking about. The State of Kentucky is
+looking this way. The State must develop, and it is here alone that it
+can develop. In the Bluegrass, the possibilities for change are
+exhausted. Their fields lie fallow, their woodlands are being stripped.
+Tobacco has tainted the land. It has shouldered out the timber, and is
+turning forest to prairie. A land of fertile loam is vying with cheap
+soil that can send almost equal crops to market. There is no more
+timber to be cut, and when the timber goes the climate changes. In
+these hills lie the sleeping sources of wealth. Here are virgin forests
+and almost inexhaustible coal veins. Capital is turning from an orange
+squeezed dry, and casting about for fresher food. Capital has seen your
+hills. Capital is inevitable, relentless, omnipotent. Where it comes,
+it makes its laws. Conditions that have existed undisturbed will
+vanish. The law of the feud, which militia and courts have not been
+able to abate, will vanish before Capital's breath like the mists when
+the sun strikes them. Unless you learn to ride the waves which will
+presently sweep over your country, you and your people will go under.
+You may not realize it, but that is true. It is written."
+
+The boy had listened intently, but at the end he smiled, and in his
+expression was something of the soldier who scents battle, not without
+welcome.
+
+"I reckon if these here fellers air a-comin' up here ter run things,
+an' drownd out my folks, hit's a right good reason fer me ter stay here
+--an' holp my folks."
+
+"By staying here, you can't help them. It won't be work for guns, but
+for brains. By going away and coming back armed with knowledge, you can
+save them. You will know how to play the game."
+
+"I reckon they won't git our land, ner our timber, ner our coal,
+without we wants ter sell hit. I reckon ef they tries thet, guns will
+come in handy. Things has stood here like they is now, fer a hundred
+years. I reckon we kin keep 'em that-away fer a spell longer." But it
+was evident that Samson was arguing against his own belief; that he was
+trying to bolster up his resolution and impeached loyalty, and that at
+heart he was sick to be up and going to a world which did not despise
+"eddication." After a little, he waved his hand vaguely toward "down
+below."
+
+"Ef I went down thar," he questioned suddenly and irrelevantly, "would
+I hev' ter cut my ha'r?"
+
+"My dear boy," laughed Lescott, "I can introduce you in New York
+studios to many distinguished gentlemen who would feel that their heads
+had been shorn if they let their locks get as short as yours. In New
+York, you might stroll along Broadway garbed in turban and a
+_burnouse_ without greatly exciting anybody. I think my own hair
+is as long as yours."
+
+"Because," doggedly declared the mountaineer, "I wouldn't allow nobody
+ter make me cut my ha'r."
+
+"Why?" questioned Lescott, amused at the stubborn inflection.
+
+"I don't hardly know why--" He paused, then admitted with a glare as
+though defying criticism: "Sally likes hit that-away--an' I won't let
+nobody dictate ter me, that's all."
+
+The leaven was working, and one night Samson announced to his Uncle
+from the doorstep that he was "studyin' erbout goin' away fer a spell,
+an' seein' the world."
+
+The old man laid down his pipe. He cast a reproachful glance at the
+painter, which said clearly, though without words:
+
+"I have opened my home to you and offered you what I had, yet in my
+old age you take away my mainstay." For a time, he sat silent, but his
+shoulders hunched forward with a sag which they had not held a moment
+before. His seamed face appeared to age visibly and in the moment. He
+ran one bony hand through his gray mane of hair.
+
+"I 'lowed you was a-studyin' erbout thet, Samson," he said, at last.
+"I've done ther best fer ye I knowed. I kinder 'lowed thet from now on
+ye'd do the same fer me. I'm gittin' along in years right smart...."
+
+"Uncle Spicer," interrupted the boy, "I reckon ye knows thet any time
+ye needed me I'd come back."
+
+The old man's face hardened.
+
+"Ef ye goes," he said, almost sharply, "I won't never send fer ye. Any
+time ye ever wants ter come back, ye knows ther way. Thar'll be room
+an' victuals fer ye hyar."
+
+"I reckon I mout be a heap more useful ef I knowed more."
+
+"I've heered fellers say that afore. Hit hain't never turned out thet
+way with them what has left the mountings. Mebby they gets more useful,
+but they don't git useful ter us. Either they don't come back at all,
+or mebby they comes back full of newfangled notions--an' ashamed of
+their kinfoiks. Thet's the way, I've noticed, hit gen'ally turns out."
+
+Samson scorned to deny that such might be the case with him, and was
+silent. After a time, the old man went on again in a weary voice, as he
+bent down to loosen his brogans and kick them noisily off on to the
+floor:
+
+"The Souths hev done looked to ye a good deal, Samson. They 'lowed
+they could depend on ye. Ye hain't quite twenty-one yet, an' I reckon I
+could refuse ter let ye sell yer prop'ty. But thar hain't no use tryin'
+ter hold a feller when he wants ter quit. Ye don't 'low ter go right
+away, do ye?"
+
+"I hain't plumb made up my mind ter go at all," said the boy,
+shamefacedly. "But, ef I does go, I hain't a-goin' yit. I hain't spoke
+ter nobody but you about hit yit."
+
+Lescott felt reluctant to meet his host's eyes at breakfast the next
+morning, dreading their reproach, but, if Spicer South harbored
+resentment, he meant to conceal it, after the stoic's code. There was
+no hinted constraint of cordiality. Lescott felt, however, that in
+Samson's mind was working the leaven of that unspoken accusation of
+disloyalty. He resolved to make a final play, and seek to enlist Sally
+in his cause. If Sally's hero-worship could be made to take the form of
+ambition for Samson, she might be brought to relinquish him for a time,
+and urge his going that he might return strengthened. Yet, Sally's
+devotion was so instinctive and so artless that it would take
+compelling argument to convince her of any need of change. It was
+Samson as he was whom she adored. Any alteration was to be distrusted.
+Still, Lescott set out one afternoon on his doubtful mission. He was
+more versed in mountain ways than he had been. His own ears could now
+distinguish between the bell that hung at the neck of Sally's brindle
+heifer and those of old Spicer's cows. He went down to the creek at the
+hour when he knew Sally, also, would be making her way thither with her
+milk-pail, and intercepted her coming. As she approached, she was
+singing, and the man watched her from the distance. He was a landscape
+painter and not a master of _genre_ or portrait. Yet, he wished
+that he might, before going, paint Sally. She was really, after all, a
+part of the landscape, as much a thing of nature and the hills as the
+hollyhocks that had come along the picket-fences. She swayed as
+gracefully and thoughtlessly to her movements as do strong and pliant
+stems under the breeze's kiss. Artfulness she had not; nor has the
+flower: only the joy and fragrance of a brief bloom. It was that
+thought which just now struck the painter most forcibly. It was
+shameful that this girl and boy should go on to the hard and unlighted
+life that inevitably awaited them, if neither had the opportunity of
+development. She would be at forty a later edition of the Widow Miller.
+He had seen the widow. Sally's charm must be as ephemeral under the
+life of illiterate drudgery and perennial child-bearing as her mother's
+had been. Her shoulders, now so gloriously straight and strong, would
+sag, and her bosom shrink, and her face harden and take on that drawn
+misery of constant anxiety. But, if Samson went and came back with some
+conception of cherishing his wife--yes, the effort was worth making.
+Yet, as the girl came down the slope, gaily singing a very melancholy
+song, the painter broke off in his reflections, and his thoughts
+veered. If Samson left, would he ever return? Might not the old man
+after all be right? When he had seen other women and tasted other
+allurements would he, like Ulysses, still hold his barren Ithaca above
+the gilded invitation of Calypso? History has only one Ulysses. Sally's
+voice was lilting like a bird's as she walked happily. The song was one
+of those old ballads that have been held intact since the stock learned
+to sing them in the heather of the Scotch highlands before there was an
+America.
+
+  "'She's pizened me, mother, make my bed soon,
+  Fer I'm sick at my heart and I fain would lay doon.'"
+
+The man rose and went to meet her.
+
+"Miss Sally," he began, uncertainly, "I want to talk to you."
+
+She was always very grave and diffident with Lescott. He was a strange
+new type to her, and, though she had begun with a predilection in his
+favor, she had since then come to hold him in adverse prejudice. Before
+his arrival, Samson had been all hers. She had not missed in her lover
+the gallantries that she and her women had never known. At evening,
+when the supper dishes were washed and she sat in the honeysuckle
+fragrance of the young night with the whippoorwills calling, she had
+been accustomed to hear a particular whippoorwill-note call, much like
+the real ones, yet distinct to her waiting ears. She was wont to rise
+and go to the stile to meet him. She had known that every day she
+would, seemingly by chance, meet Samson somewhere along the creek, or
+on the big bowlder at the rift, or hoeing on the sloping cornfield.
+These things had been enough. But, of late, his interests had been
+divided. This painter had claimed many of his hours and many of his
+thoughts. There was in her heart an unconfessed jealousy of the
+foreigner. Now, she scrutinized him solemnly, and nodded.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" he invited, and the girl dropped cross-legged on
+a mossy rock, and waited. To-day, she wore a blue print dress, instead
+of the red one. It was always a matter of amazement to the man that in
+such an environment she was not only wildly beautiful, but invariably
+the pink of neatness. She could climb a tree or a mountain, or emerge
+from a sweltering blackberry patch, seemingly as fresh and unruffled as
+she had been at the start. The man stood uncomfortably looking at her,
+and was momentarily at a loss for words with which to commence.
+
+"What was ye a-goin' ter tell me?" she asked.
+
+"Miss Sally," he began, "I've discovered something about Samson."
+
+Her blue eyes flashed ominously.
+
+"Ye can't tell me nothin' 'bout Samson," she declared, "withouten
+hit's somethin' nice."
+
+"It's something very nice," the man reassured her.
+
+"Then, ye needn't tell me, because I already knows hit," came her
+prompt and confident announcement.
+
+Lescott shook his head, dubiously.
+
+"Samson is a genius," he said.
+
+"What's thet?"
+
+"He has great gifts--great abilities to become a figure in the world."
+
+She nodded her head, in prompt and full corroboration.
+
+"I reckon Samson'll be the biggest man in the mountings some day."
+
+"He ought to be more than that."
+
+Suspicion at once cast a cloud across the violet serenity of her eyes.
+
+"What does ye mean?" she demanded.
+
+"I mean"--the painter paused a moment, and then said bluntly--"I mean
+that I want to take him back with me to New York."
+
+The girl sprang to her feet with her chin defiantly high and her brown
+hands clenched into tight little fists. Her bosom heaved convulsively,
+and her eyes blazed through tears of anger. Her face was pale.
+
+"Ye hain't!" she cried, in a paroxysm of fear and wrath. "Ye hain't a-
+goin' ter do no sich--no sich of a damn thing!" She stamped her foot,
+and her whole girlish body, drawn into rigid uprightness, was a-quiver
+with the incarnate spirit of the woman defending her home and
+institutions. For a moment after that, she could not speak, but her
+determined eyes blazed a declaration of war. It was as though he had
+posed her as the Spirit of the Cumberlands.
+
+He waited until she should be calmer. It was useless to attempt
+stemming her momentary torrent of rage. It was like one of the sudden
+and magnificent tempests that often swept these hills, a brief visit of
+the furies. One must seek shelter and wait. It would end as suddenly as
+it had come. At last, he spoke, very softly.
+
+"You don't understand me, Miss Sally. I'm not trying to take Samson
+away from you. If a man should lose a girl like you, he couldn't gain
+enough in the world to make up for it. All I want is that he shall have
+the chance to make the best of his life."
+
+"I reckon Samson don't need no fotched-on help ter make folks
+acknowledge him."
+
+"Every man needs his chance. He can be a great painter--but that's the
+least part of it. He can come back equipped for anything that life
+offers. Here, he is wasted."
+
+"Ye mean"--she put the question with a hurt quaver in her voice--"ye
+mean we all hain't good enough fer Samson?"
+
+"No. I only mean that Samson wants to grow--and he needs space and new
+scenes in which to grow. I want to take him where he can see more of
+the world--not only a little section of the world. Surely, you are not
+distrustful of Samson's loyalty? I want him to go with me for a while,
+and see life."
+
+"Don't ye say hit!" The defiance in her voice was being pathetically
+tangled up with the tears. She was speaking in a transport of grief.
+"Don't ye say hit. Take anybody else--take 'em all down thar, but leave
+us Samson. We needs him hyar. We've jest got ter have Samson hyar."
+
+She faced him still with quivering lips, but in another moment, with a
+sudden sob, she dropped to the rock, and buried her face in her crossed
+arms. Her slender body shook under a harrowing convulsion of
+unhappiness. Lescott felt as though he had struck her; as though he had
+ruthlessly blighted the irresponsible joyousness which had a few
+minutes before sung from her lips with the blitheness of a mocking-
+bird. He went over and softly laid a hand on her shoulder.
+
+"Miss Sally--" he began.
+
+She suddenly turned on him a tear-stained, infuriated face, stormy
+with blazing eyes and wet cheeks and trembling lips.
+
+"Don't touch me," she cried; "don't ye dare ter touch me! I hain't
+nothin' but a gal--but I reckon I could 'most tear ye ter pieces. Ye're
+jest a pizen snake, anyhow!" Then, she pointed a tremulous finger off
+up the road. "Git away from hyar," she commanded. "I don't never want
+ter see ye again. Ye're tryin' ter steal everything I loves. Git away,
+I tells ye!--git away--begone!"
+
+"Think it over," urged Lescott, quietly. "See if your heart doesn't
+say I am Samson's friend--and yours." He turned, and began making his
+way over the rocks; but, before he had gone far, he sat down to reflect
+upon the situation. Certainly, he was not augmenting his popularity. A
+half-hour later, he heard a rustle, and, turning, saw Sally standing
+not far off. She was hesitating at the edge of the underbrush, and
+Lescott read in her eyes the effort it was costing her to come forward
+and apologize. Her cheeks were still pale and her eyes wet, but the
+tempest of her anger had spent itself, and in the girl who stood
+penitently, one hand nervously clutching a branch of rhododendron, one
+foot twisting in the moss, Lescott was seeing an altogether new Sally.
+There was a renunciation in her eyes that in contrast with the child-
+like curve of her lips, and slim girlishness of her figure, seemed
+entirely pathetic.
+
+As she stood there, trying to come forward with a pitiful effort at
+composure and a twisted smile, Lescott wanted to go and meet her. But
+he knew her shyness, and realized that the kindest thing would be to
+pretend that he had not seen her at all. So, he covertly watched her,
+while he assumed to sit in moody unconsciousness of her nearness.
+
+Little by little, and step by step, she edged over to him, halting
+often and looking about with the impulse to slip out of sight, but
+always bracing herself and drawing a little nearer. Finally, he knew
+that she was standing almost directly over him, and yet it was a moment
+or two more before her voice, sweetly penitent, announced her arrival.
+
+"I reckon--I reckon I've got ter ask yore pardon," she said, slowly
+and with labored utterance. He looked up to see her standing with her
+head drooping and her fingers nervously pulling a flower to pieces.
+
+"I reckon I hain't a plumb fool. I knows thet Samson's got a right ter
+eddication. Anyhow, I knows he wants hit."
+
+"Education," said the man, "isn't going to change Samson, except to
+make him finer than he is--and more capable."
+
+She shook her head. "I hain't got no eddication," she answered. "Hit's
+a-goin' ter make him too good fer me. I reckon hit's a-goin' ter jest
+about kill me.... Ye hain't never seed these here mountings in the
+winter time, when thar hain't nothin' green, an' thar hain't no birds
+a-singin', an' thar hain't nothin' but rain an' snow an' fog an' misery.
+They're a-goin' ter be like thet all the time fer me, atter Samson's
+gone away." She choked back something like a sob before she went on.
+"Yes, stranger, hit's a-goin' ter pretty nigh kill me, but--" Her lips
+twisted themselves into the pathetic smile again, and her chin came
+stiffly up. "But," she added, determinedly, "thet don't make no
+difference, nohow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Yet, when Samson that evening gave his whippoorwill call at the Widow
+Miller's cabin, he found a dejected and miserable girl sitting on the
+stile, with her chin propped in her two hands and her eyes full of
+somberness and foreboding.
+
+"What's the matter, Sally?" questioned he, anxiously. "Hes that low-down
+Tamarack Spicer been round here tellin' ye some more stories ter pester
+ye?"
+
+She shook her head in silence. Usually, she bore the brunt of their
+conversations, Samson merely agreeing with, or overruling, her in
+lordly brevities. The boy climbed up and sat beside her.
+
+"Thar's a-goin' ter be a dancin' party over ter Wile McCager's mill
+come Saturday," he insinuatingly suggested. "I reckon ye'll go over
+thar with me, won't ye, Sally?"
+
+He waited for her usual delighted assent, but Sally only told him
+absently and without enthusiasm that she would "study about it." At
+last, however, her restraint broke, and, looking up, she abruptly
+demanded:
+
+"Air ye a-goin' away, Samson?"
+
+"Who's been a-talkin' ter ye?" demanded the boy, angrily.
+
+For a moment, the girl sat silent. Silver mists were softening under a
+rising moon. The katydids were prophesying with strident music the six
+weeks' warning of frost. Myriads of stars were soft and low-hanging.
+Finally, she spoke in a grave voice:
+
+"Hit hain't nothin' ter git mad about, Samson. The artist man 'lowed
+as how ye had a right ter go down thar, an' git an eddication." She
+made a weary gesture toward the great beyond.
+
+"He hadn't ought to of told ye, Sally. If I'd been plumb sartin in my
+mind, I'd a-told ye myself--not but what I knows," he hastily amended,
+"thet he meant hit friendly."
+
+"Air ye a-goin'?"
+
+"I'm studyin' about hit."
+
+He awaited objection, but none came. Then, with a piquing of his
+masculine vanity, he demanded:
+
+"Hain't ye a-keerin', Sally, whether I goes, or not?"
+
+The girl grew rigid. Her fingers on the crumbling plank of the stile's
+top tightened and gripped hard. The moonlit landscape seemed to whirl
+in a dizzy circle. Her face did not betray her, nor her voice, though
+she had to gulp down a rising lump in her throat before she could
+answer calmly.
+
+"I thinks ye had ought ter go, Samson."
+
+The boy was astonished. He had avoided the subject for fear of her
+opposition--and tears.
+
+Then, slowly, she went on as though repeating a lesson painstakingly
+conned:
+
+"There hain't nothin' in these here hills fer ye, Samson. Down thar,
+ye'll see lots of things thet's new--an' civilized an' beautiful! Ye'll
+see lots of gals thet kin read an' write, gals dressed up in all kinds
+of fancy fixin's." Her glib words ran out and ended in a sort of inward
+gasp.
+
+Compliment came hardly and awkwardly to Samson's lips. He reached for
+the girl's hand, and whispered:
+
+"I reckon I won't see no gals thet's as purty as you be, Sally. I
+reckon ye knows, whether I goes or stays, we're a-goin' ter git married."
+
+She drew her hand away, and laughed, a little bitterly. In the last day,
+she had ceased to be a child, and become a woman with all the soul-aching
+possibilities of a woman's intuitions.
+
+"Samson," she said, "I hain't askin' ye ter make me no promises. When
+ye sees them other gals--gals thet kin read an' write--I reckon mebby
+ye'll think diff'rent. I can't hardly spell out printin' in the fust
+reader."
+
+Her lover's voice was scornful of the imagined dangers, as a recruit
+may be of the battle terrors--before he has been under fire. He slipped
+his arm about her and drew her over to him.
+
+"Honey," he said, "ye needn't fret about thet. Readin' an' writin'
+can't make no difference fer a woman. Hit's mighty important fer a man,
+but you're a gal."
+
+"You're a-goin' ter think diff'rent atter awhile," she insisted. "When
+ye goes, I hain't a-goin' ter be expectin' ye ter come back ... But"
+--the resolution in her voice for a moment quavered as she added--"but
+God knows I'm a-goin' ter be hopin'!"
+
+"Sally!" The boy rose, and paced up and down in the road. "Air ye
+goin' ter be ag'inst me, too? Don't ye see that I wants ter have a
+chanst? Can't ye trust me? I'm jest a-tryin' to amount to something.
+I'm plumb tired of bein' ornery an' no 'count."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I've done told ye," she said, wearily, "thet I thinks ye ought ter do
+hit."
+
+He stood there in the road looking down at her and the twisted smile
+that lifted only one corner of her lips, while the other drooped. The
+moonlight caught her eyes; eyes that were trying, like the lips, to
+smile, but that were really looking away into the future, which she saw
+stripped of companionship and love, and gray with the ashiness of
+wretched desolation. And, while he was seeing the light of the
+simulated cheeriness die out in her face, she was seeing the strange,
+exalted glow, of which she was more than half-afraid, kindle in his
+pupils. It was as though she were giving up the living fire out of her
+own heart to set ablaze the ambition and anticipation in his own.
+
+That glow in Samson's eyes she feared and shrank from, as she might
+have flinched before the blaze of insanity. It was a thing which her
+mountain superstition could not understand, a thing not wholly normal;
+a manifestation that came to the stoic face and transformed it, when
+the eyes of the brain and heart were seeing things which she herself
+could not see. It was the proclamation of the part of Samson which she
+could not comprehend, as though he were looking into a spirit world of
+weird and abnormal things. It was the light of an enthusiasm such as
+his love for her could not bring to his eyes--and it told her that the
+strongest and deepest part of Samson did not belong to her. Now, as the
+young man stood there before her, and her little world of hope and
+happiness seemed crumbling into ruins, and she was steeling her soul to
+sacrifice herself and let him go, he was thinking, not of what it was
+costing her in heart-break, but seeing visions of all the great world
+held for him beyond the barriers of the mountains. The light in his
+eyes seemed to flaunt the victory of the enthusiasms that had nothing
+to do with her.
+
+Samson came forward, and held out his arms. But Sally drew away with a
+little shudder, and crouched at the end of the stile.
+
+"What's ther matter, Sally?" he demanded in surprise, and, as he bent
+toward her, his eyes lost the strange light she feared, and she laughed
+a little nervous laugh, and rose from her seat.
+
+"Nothin' hain't ther matter--now," she said, stanchly.
+
+Lescott and Samson discussed the matter frequently. At times, the boy
+was obstinate in his determination to remain; at other times, he gave
+way to the yearnings for change and opportunity. But the lure of the
+palette and brush possessed him beyond resistance and his taciturnity
+melted, when in the painter's company, to a roughly poetic form of
+expression.
+
+"Thet sunrise," he announced one morning, setting down his milk-pail
+to gaze at the east, "is jest like the sparkle in a gal's eyes when
+she's tickled at somethin' ye've said about her. An,' when the sun
+sets, hit's like the whole world was a woman blushin'."
+
+The dance on Saturday was to be something more portentous than a mere
+frolic. It would be a clan gathering to which the South adherents would
+come riding up and down Misery and its tributaries from "nigh abouts"
+and "over yon." From forenoon until after midnight, shuffle, jig and
+fiddling would hold high, if rough, carnival. But, while the younger
+folk abandoned themselves to these diversions, the grayer heads would
+gather in more serious conclave. Jesse Purvy had once more beaten back
+death, and his mind had probably been devising, during those bed-ridden
+days and nights, plans of reprisal. According to current report, Purvy
+had announced that his would-be assassin dwelt on Misery, and was
+"marked down." So, there were obvious exigencies which the Souths must
+prepare to meet. In particular, the clan must thrash out to definite
+understanding the demoralizing report that Samson South, their logical
+leader, meant to abandon them, at a crisis when war-clouds were
+thickening.
+
+The painter had finally resolved to cut the Gordian knot, and leave
+the mountains. He had trained on Samson to the last piece all his
+artillery of argument. The case was now submitted with the suggestion
+that the boy take three months to consider, and that, if he decided
+affirmatively, he should notify Lescott in advance of his coming. He
+proposed sending Samson a small library of carefully picked books,
+which the mountaineer eagerly agreed to devour in the interval.
+
+Lescott consented, however, to remain over Saturday, and go to the
+dance, since he was curious to observe what pressure was brought to
+bear on the boy, and to have himself a final word of argument after the
+kinsmen had spoken.
+
+Saturday morning came after a night of torrential rain, which had left
+the mountains steaming under a reek of fog and pitching clouds.
+Hillside streams ran freshets, and creek-bed roads were foaming and
+boiling into waterfalls. Sheep and cattle huddled forlornly under their
+shelters of shelving rock, and only the geese seemed happy.
+
+Far down the dripping shoulders of the mountains trailed ragged
+streamers of vapor. Here and there along the lower slopes hung puffs of
+smoky mist as though silent shells were bursting from unseen artillery
+over a vast theater of combat.
+
+But, as the morning wore on, the sun fought its way to view in a scrap
+of overhead blue. A freshening breeze plunged into the reek, and sent
+it scurrying in broken cloud ranks and shredded tatters. The steamy
+heat gave way under a dissipating sweep of coolness, until the skies
+smiled down on the hills and the hills smiled back. From log cabins and
+plank houses up and down Misery and its tributaries, men and women
+began their hegira toward the mill. Some came on foot, carrying their
+shoes in their hands, but those were only near-by dwellers. Others made
+saddle journeys of ten or fifteen, or even twenty, miles, and the
+beasts that carried a single burden were few. Lescott rode in the wake
+of Samson, who had Sally on a pillow at his back, and along the seven
+miles of journey he studied the strange procession. It was, for the
+most part, a solemn cavalcade, for these are folk who "take their
+pleasures sadly." Possibly, some of the sun-bonneted, strangely-garbed
+women were reflecting on the possibilities which mountain-dances often
+develop into tragic actualities. Possibly, others were having their
+enjoyment discounted by the necessity of "dressing up" and wearing shoes.
+
+Sometimes, a slowly ambling mule bore an entire family; the father
+managing the reins with one hand and holding a baby with the other,
+while his rifle lay balanced across his pommel and his wife sat
+solemnly behind him on a sheepskin or pillion. Many of the men rode
+side-saddles, and sacks bulky at each end hinted of such baggage as is
+carried in jugs. Lescott realized from the frank curiosity with which
+he was regarded that he had been a topic of discussion, and that he was
+now being "sized up." He was the false prophet who was weaving a spell
+over Samson! Once, he heard a sneering voice from the wayside comment
+as he rode by.
+
+"He looks like a damned parson."
+
+Glancing back, he saw a tow-headed youth glowering at him out of
+pinkish albino eyes. The way lay in part along the creek-bed, where
+wagons had ground the disintegrating rock into deep ruts as smooth as
+walls of concrete. Then, it traversed a country of palisading cliffs
+and immensity of forest, park-like and splendid. Strangely picturesque
+suspension bridges with rough stairways at their ends spanned waters
+too deep for fording. Frame houses showed along the banks of the creek
+--grown here to a river--unplaned and unpainted of wall, but brightly
+touched with window-and door-frames of bright yellow or green or blue.
+This was the territory where the Souths held dominance, and it was
+pouring out its people.
+
+They came before noon to the mouth of Dryhole Creek, and the house of
+Wile McCager. Already, the picket fence was lined with tethered horses
+and mules, and a canvas-covered wagon came creeping in behind its yoke
+of oxen. Men stood clustered in the road, and at the entrance a woman,
+nursing her baby at her breast, welcomed and gossiped with the arrivals.
+
+The house of Wile McCager loaned itself to entertainment. It was not
+of logs, but of undressed lumber, and boasted a front porch and two
+front rooms entered by twin doors facing on a triangular alcove. In the
+recess between these portals stood a washstand, surmounted by a china
+basin and pitcher--a declaration of affluence. From the interior of the
+house came the sounds of fiddling, though these strains of "Turkey in
+the Straw" were only by way of prelude. Lescott felt, though he could
+not say just what concrete thing told him, that under the shallow note
+of merry-making brooded the major theme of a troublesome problem. The
+seriousness was below the surface, but insistently depressing. He saw,
+too, that he himself was mixed up with it in a fashion, which might
+become dangerous, when a few jugs of white liquor had been emptied.
+
+It would be some time yet before the crowd warmed up. Now, they only
+stood about and talked, and to Lescott they gave a gravely polite
+greeting, beneath which was discernible an undercurrent of hostility.
+
+As the day advanced, the painter began picking out the more
+influential clansmen, by the fashion in which they fell together into
+groups, and took themselves off to the mill by the racing creek for
+discussion. While the young persons danced and "sparked" within, and
+the more truculent lads escaped to the road to pass the jug, and
+forecast with youthful war-fever "cleanin' out the Hollmans," the
+elders were deep in ways and means. If the truce could be preserved for
+its unexpired period of three years, it was, of course, best. In that
+event, crops could be cultivated, and lives saved. But, if Jesse Purvy
+chose to regard his shooting as a breach of terms, and struck, he would
+strike hard, and, in that event, best defense lay in striking first.
+Samson would soon be twenty-one. That he would take his place as head
+of the clan had until now never been questioned--and he was talking of
+desertion. For that, a pink-skinned foreigner, who wore a woman's bow
+of ribbon at his collar, was to blame. The question of loyalty must be
+squarely put up to Samson, and it must be done to-day. His answer must
+be definite and unequivocal. As a guest of Spicer South, Lescott was
+entitled to that consideration which is accorded ambassadors.
+
+None the less, the vital affairs of the clan could not be balked by
+consideration for a stranger, who, in the opinion of the majority,
+should be driven from the country as an insidious mischief-maker.
+Ostensibly, the truce still held, but at no time since its signing had
+matters been so freighted with the menace of a gathering storm. The
+attitude of each faction was that of several men standing quiet with
+guns trained on one another's breasts. Each hesitated to fire, knowing
+that to pull the trigger meant to die himself, yet fearing that another
+trigger might at any moment be drawn. Purvy dared not have Samson shot
+out of hand, because he feared that the Souths would claim his life in
+return, yet he feared to let Samson live. On the other hand, if Purvy
+fell, no South could balance his death, except Spicer or Samson. Any
+situation that might put conditions to a moment of issue would either
+prove that the truce was being observed, or open the war--and yet each
+faction was guarding against such an event as too fraught with danger.
+One thing was certain. By persuasion or force, Lescott must leave, and
+Samson must show himself to be the youth he had been thought, or the
+confessed and repudiated renegade. Those questions, to-day must answer.
+It was a difficult situation, and promised an eventful entertainment.
+Whatever conclusion was reached as to the artist's future, he was,
+until the verdict came in, a visitor, and, unless liquor inflamed some
+reckless trouble-hunter, that fact would not be forgotten. Possibly, it
+was as well that Tamarack Spicer had not arrived.
+
+Lescott himself realized the situation in part, as he stood at the
+door of the house watching the scene inside.
+
+There was, of course, no round dancing--only the shuffle and jig--with
+champions contending for the honor of their sections. A young woman
+from Deer Lick and a girl from the head of Dryhill had been matched for
+the "hoe-down," and had the floor to themselves. The walls were crowded
+with partisan onlookers, who applauded and cheered their favorite.
+
+The bows scraped faster and louder; the clapping hands beat more
+tumultuously, until their mad _tempo_ was like the clatter of
+musketry; the dancers threw themselves deliriously into the madly
+quickening step. It was a riotous saturnalia of flying feet and
+twinkling ankles. Onlookers shouted and screamed encouragement. It
+seemed that the girls must fall in exhaustion, yet each kept on,
+resolved to be still on the floor when the other had abandoned it in
+defeat--that being the test of victory. At last, the girl from Dryhill
+reeled, and was caught by half-a-dozen arms. Her adversary, holding the
+floor undisputed, slowed down, and someone stopped the fiddler. Sally
+turned from the crowded wall, and began looking about for Samson. He
+was not there. Lescott had seen him leave the house a few moments
+before, and started over to intercept the girl, as she came out to the
+porch.
+
+In the group about the door, he passed a youth with tow-white hair and
+very pink cheeks. The boy was the earliest to succumb to the temptation
+of the moonshine jug, a temptation which would later claim others. He
+was reeling crazily, and his albino eyes were now red and inflamed.
+Lescott remembered him.
+
+"Thet's ther damned furriner thet's done turned Samson inter a gal,"
+proclaimed the youth, in a thick voice.
+
+The painter paused, and looked back. The boy was reaching under his
+coat with hands that had become clumsy and unresponsive.
+
+"Let me git at him," he shouted, with a wild whoop and a dash toward
+the painter.
+
+Lescott said nothing, but Sally had heard, and stepped swiftly between.
+
+"You've got ter git past me fust, Buddy," she said, quietly. "I reckon
+ye'd better run on home, an' git yore mammy ter put ye ter bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Several soberer men closed around the boy, and, after disarming him,
+led him away grumbling and muttering, while Wile McCager made apologies
+to the guest.
+
+"Jimmy's jest a peevish child," he explained. "A drop or two of licker
+makes him skittish. I hopes ye'll look over hit."
+
+Jimmy's outbreak was interesting to Lescott chiefly as an indication
+of what might follow. He noted how the voices were growing louder and
+shriller, and how the jug was circulating faster. A boisterous note was
+making itself heard through the good humor and laughter, and the
+"furriner" remembered that these minds, when inflamed, are more prone
+to take the tangent of violence than that of mirth. Unwilling to
+introduce discord by his presence, and involve Samson in quarrels on
+his account, he suggested riding back to Misery, but the boy's face
+clouded at the suggestion.
+
+"Ef they kain't be civil ter my friends," he said, shortly, "they've
+got ter account ter me. You stay right hyar, and I'll stay clost to
+you. I done come hyar to-day ter tell 'em that they mustn't meddle in
+my business."
+
+A short while later, Wile McCager invited Samson to come out to the
+mill, and the boy nodded to Lescott an invitation to accompany him. The
+host shook his head.
+
+"We kinder 'lowed ter talk over some fam'ly matters with ye, Samson,"
+he demurred. "I reckon Mr. Lescott'll excuse ye fer a spell."
+
+"Anything ye've got ter talk ter me about, George Lescott kin hear,"
+said the youth, defiantly. "I hain't got no secrets." He was heir to
+his father's leadership, and his father had been unquestioned. He meant
+to stand uncompromisingly on his prerogatives.
+
+For an instant, the old miller's keen eyes hardened obstinately. After
+Spicer and Samson South, he was the most influential and trusted of the
+South leaders--and Samson was still a boy. His ruggedly chiseled
+features were kindly, but robustly resolute, and, when he was angered,
+few men cared to face him. For an instant, a stinging rebuke seemed to
+hover on his lips, then he turned with a curt jerk of his large head.
+
+"All right. Suit yourselves. I've done warned ye both. We 'lows ter
+talk plain."
+
+The mill, dating back to pioneer days, sat by its race with its shaft
+now idle. About it, the white-boled sycamores crowded among the huge
+rocks, and the water poured tumultuously over the dam. The walls of
+mortised logs were chinked with rock and clay. At its porch, two
+discarded millstones served in lieu of steps. Over the door were
+fastened a spreading pair of stag-antlers. It looked to Lescott, as he
+approached, like a scrap of landscape torn from some medieval picture,
+and the men about its door seemed medieval, too; bearded and gaunt,
+hard-thewed and sullen.
+
+All of them who stood waiting were men of middle age, or beyond. A
+number were gray-haired, but they were all of cadet branches. Many of
+them, like Wile McCager himself, did not bear the name of South, and
+Samson was the eldest son of the eldest son. They sat on meal-whitened
+bins and dusty timbers and piled-up sacks. Several crouched on the
+ground, squatting on their heels, and, as the conference proceeded,
+they drank moonshine whiskey, and spat solemnly at the floor cracks.
+
+"Hevn't ye noticed a right-smart change in Samson?" inquired old Caleb
+Wiley of a neighbor, in his octogenarian quaver. "The boy hes done got
+es quiet an' pious es a missionary."
+
+The other nodded under his battered black felt hat, and beat a tattoo
+with the end of his long hickory staff.
+
+"He hain't drunk a half-pint of licker to-day," he querulously replied.
+
+"Why in heck don't we run this here pink-faced conjure-doctor outen
+the mountings?" demanded Caleb, who had drunk more than a half-pint.
+"He's a-castin' spells over the boy. He's a-practisin' of deviltries."
+
+"We're a-goin' ter see about thet right now," was the response. "We
+don't 'low to let hit run on no further."
+
+"Samson," began old Wile McCager, clearing his throat and taking up
+his duty as spokesman, "we're all your kinfolks here, an' we aimed ter
+ask ye about this here report thet yer 'lowin' ter leave the mountings?"
+
+"What of hit?" countered the boy.
+
+"Hit looks mighty like the war's a-goin' ter be on ag'in pretty soon.
+Air ye a-goin' ter quit, or air ye a-goin' ter stick? Thet's what we
+wants ter know."
+
+"I didn't make this here truce, an' I hain't a-goin' ter bust hit,"
+said the boy, quietly. "When the war commences, I'll be hyar. Ef I
+hain't hyar in the meantime, hit hain't nobody's business. I hain't
+accountable ter no man but my pap, an' I reckon, whar he is, he knows
+whether I'm a-goin' ter keep my word."
+
+There was a moment's silence, then Wile McCager put another question:
+
+"Ef ye're plumb sot on gittin' larnin' why don't ye git hit right hyar
+in these mountings?"
+
+Samson laughed derisively.
+
+"Who'll I git hit from?" he caustically inquired. "Ef the mountain
+won't come ter Mohamet, Mohamet's got ter go ter the mountain, I
+reckon." The figure was one they did not understand. It was one Samson
+himself had only acquired of late. He was quoting George Lescott. But
+one thing there was which did not escape his hearers: the tone of
+contempt. Eyes of smoldering hate turned on the visitor at whose door
+they laid the blame.
+
+Caleb Wiley rose unsteadily to his feet, his shaggy beard trembling
+with wrath and his voice quavering with senile indignation.
+
+"Hev ye done got too damned good fer yore kin-folks, Samson South?" he
+shrilly demanded. "Hev ye done been follerin' atter this here puny
+witch-doctor twell ye can't keep a civil tongue in yer head fer yore
+elders? I'm in favor of runnin' this here furriner outen the country
+with tar an' feathers on him. Furthermore, I'm in favor of cleanin' out
+the Hollmans. I was jest a-sayin' ter Bill----"
+
+"Never mind what ye war jest a-sayin'," interrupted the boy, flushing
+redly to his cheekbones, but controlling his voice. "Ye've done said
+enough a'ready. Ye're a right old man, Caleb, an' I reckon thet gives
+ye some license ter shoot off yore face, but ef any of them no-'count,
+shif'less boys of yores wants ter back up what ye says, I'm ready ter
+go out thar an' make 'em eat hit. I hain't a-goin' ter answer no more
+questions."
+
+There was a commotion of argument, until "Black Dave" Jasper, a
+saturnine giant, whose hair was no blacker than his expression, rose,
+and a semblance of quiet greeted him as he spoke.
+
+"Mebby, Samson, ye've got a right ter take the studs this a-way, an'
+ter refuse ter answer our questions, but we've got a right ter say who
+kin stay in this hyar country. Ef ye 'lows ter quit us, I reckon we kin
+quit you--and, if we quits ye, ye hain't nothin' more ter us then no
+other boy thet's gettin' too big fer his breeches. This furriner is a
+visitor here to-day, an' we don't 'low ter hurt him--but he's got ter
+go. We don't want him round hyar no longer." He turned to Lescott.
+"We're a-givin' ye fair warnin', stranger. Ye hain't our breed. Atter
+this, ye stays on Misery at yore own risk--an' hit's a-goin' ter be
+plumb risky. That thar's final."
+
+"This man," blazed the boy, before Lescott could speak, "is a-visitin'
+me an' Unc' Spicer. When ye wants him ye kin come up thar an' git him.
+Every damned man of ye kin come. I hain't a-sayin' how many of ye'll go
+back. He was 'lowin' that he'd leave hyar ter-morrer mornin', but atter
+this I'm a-tellin' ye he hain't a-goin' ter do hit. He's a-goin' ter
+stay es long es he likes, an' nobody hain't a-goin' ter run him off."
+Samson took his stand before the painter, and swept the group with his
+eyes. "An' what's more," he added, "I'll tell ye another thing. I
+hadn't plumb made up my mind ter leave the mountings, but ye've done
+settled hit fer me. I'm a-goin'."
+
+There was a low murmur of anger, and a voice cried out from the rear:
+
+"Let him go. We hain't got no use fer damn cowards."
+
+"Whoever said thet's a liar!" shouted the boy. Lescott, standing at
+his side, felt that the situation was more than parlous. But, before
+the storm could break, some one rushed in, and whispered to Wile
+McCager a message that caused him to raise both hands above his head,
+and thunder for attention.
+
+"Men," he roared, "listen ter me! This here hain't no time fer squabblin'
+amongst ourselves. We're all Souths. Tamarack Spicer has done gone ter
+Hixon, an' got inter trouble. He's locked up in the jail-house."
+
+"We're all hyar," screamed old Caleb's high, broken voice. "Let's go
+an' take him out."
+
+Samson's anger had died. He turned, and held a whispered conversation
+with McCager, and, at its end, the host of the day announced briefly:
+
+"Samson's got somethin' ter say ter ye. So long as he's willin' ter
+stand by us, I reckon we're willin' ter listen ter Henry South's boy."
+
+"I hain't got no use for Tam'rack Spicer," said the boy, succinctly,
+"but I don't 'low ter let him lay in no jail-house, unlessen he's got a
+right ter be thar. What's he charged with?"
+
+But no one knew that. A man supposedly close to the Hollmans, but in
+reality an informer for the Souths, had seen him led into the jail-yard
+by a posse of a half-dozen men, and had seen the iron-barred doors
+close on him. That was all, except that the Hollman forces were
+gathering in Hixon, and, if the Souths went there _en masse_, a
+pitched battle must be the inevitable result. The first step was to
+gain accurate information and an answer to one vital question. Was
+Tamarack held as a feud victim, or was his arrest legitimate? How to
+learn that was the problem. To send a body of men was to invite
+bloodshed. To send a single inquirer was to deliver him over to the
+enemy.
+
+"Air you men willin' ter take my word about Tamarack?" inquired
+Samson. But for the scene of a few minutes ago, it would have been an
+unnecessary question. There was a clamorous assent, and the boy turned
+to Lescott.
+
+"I wants ye ter take Sally home with ye. Ye'd better start right away,
+afore she heers any of this talk. Hit would fret her. Tell her I've had
+ter go 'cross ther country a piece, ter see a sick man. Don't tell her
+whar I'm a-goin'." He turned to the others. "I reckon I've got yore
+promise thet Mr. Lescott hain't a-goin' ter be bothered afore I gits
+back?"
+
+Wile McCager promptly gave the assurance.
+
+"I gives ye my hand on hit."
+
+"I seed Jim Asberry loafin' round jest beyond ther ridge, es I rid
+over hyar," volunteered the man who had brought the message.
+
+"Go slow now, Samson. Don't be no blame fool," dissuaded Wile McCager.
+"Hixon's plumb full of them Hollmans, an' they're likely ter be full of
+licker--hit's Saturday. Hit's apt ter be shore death fer ye ter try ter
+ride through Main Street--ef ye gits thet fur. Ye dassent do hit."
+
+"I dast do anything!" asserted the boy, with a flash of sudden anger.
+"Some liar 'lowed awhile ago thet I was a coward. All right, mebby I
+be. Unc' Wile, keep the boys hyar tell ye hears from me--an' keep 'em
+sober." He turned and made his way to the fence where his mule stood
+hitched.
+
+When Samson crossed the ridge, and entered the Hollman country, Jim
+Asberry, watching from a hilltop point of vantage, rose and mounted the
+horse that stood hitched behind a near-by screen of rhododendron bushes
+and young cedars. Sometimes, he rode just one bend of the road in
+Samson's rear. Sometimes, he took short cuts, and watched his enemy
+pass. But always he held him under a vigilant eye. Finally, he reached
+a wayside store where a local telephone gave communication with
+Hollman's Mammoth Department Store.
+
+"Jedge," he informed, "Samson South's done left the party et ther
+mill, an' he's a-ridin' towards town. Shall I git him?"
+
+"Is he comin' by hisself?" inquired the storekeeper.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, jest let him come on. We can tend ter him hyar, ef necessary."
+So, Jim withheld his hand, and merely shadowed, sending bulletins, from
+time to time.
+
+It was three o'clock when Samson started. It was near six when he
+reached the ribbon of road that loops down into town over the mountain.
+His mule was in a lather of sweat. He knew that he was being spied
+upon, and that word of his coming was traveling ahead of him. What he
+did not know was whether or not it suited Jesse Purvy's purpose that he
+should slide from his mule, dead, before he turned homeward. If
+Tamarack had been seized as a declaration of war, the chief South would
+certainly not be allowed to return. If the arrest had not been for feud
+reasons, he might escape. That was the question which would be answered
+with his life or death.
+
+The boy kept his eyes straight to the front, fixed on the
+philosophical wagging of his mule's brown ears. Finally, he crossed the
+bridge that gave entrance to the town, as yet unharmed, and clattered
+at a trot between the shacks of the environs. He was entering the
+fortified stronghold of the enemy, and he was expected. As he rode
+along, doors closed to slits, and once or twice he caught the flash of
+sunlight on a steel barrel, but his eyes held to the front. Several
+traveling men, sitting on the porch of the hotel opposite the court-
+house, rose when they saw his mule, and went inside, closing the door
+behind them.
+
+The "jail-house" was a small building of home-made brick, squatting at
+the rear of the court-house yard. Its barred windows were narrow with
+sills breast-high.
+
+The court-house itself was shaded by large oaks and sycamores, and, as
+Samson drew near, he saw that some ten or twelve men, armed with
+rifles, separated from groups and disposed themselves behind the tree
+trunks and the stone coping of the well. None of them spoke, and Samson
+pretended that he had not seen them. He rode his mule at a walk,
+knowing that he was rifle-covered from a half-dozen windows. At the
+hitching rack directly beneath the county building, he flung his reins
+over a post, and, swinging his rifle at his side, passed casually along
+the brick walk to the jail. The men behind the trees edged around their
+covers as he went, keeping themselves protected, as squirrels creep
+around a trunk when a hunter is lurking below. Samson halted at the
+jail wall, and called the prisoner's name. A towsled head and surly
+face appeared at the barred window, and the boy went over and held
+converse from the outside.
+
+"How in hell did ye git into town?" demanded the prisoner.
+
+"I rid in," was the short reply. "How'd ye git in the jail-house?"
+
+The captive was shamefaced.
+
+"I got a leetle too much licker, an' I was shootin' out the lights
+last night," he confessed.
+
+"What business did ye have hyar in Hixon?"
+
+"I jest slipped in ter see a gal."
+
+Samson leaned closer, and lowered his voice.
+
+"Does they know thet ye shot them shoots at Jesse Purvy?"
+
+Tamarack turned pale.
+
+"No," he stammered, "they believe you done hit."
+
+Samson laughed. He was thinking of the rifles trained on him from a
+dozen invisible rests.
+
+"How long air they a-goin' ter keep ye hyar?" he demanded.
+
+"I kin git out to-morrer ef I pays the fine. Hit's ten dollars."
+
+"An' ef ye don't pay the fine?"
+
+"Hit's a dollar a day."
+
+"I reckon ye don't 'low ter pay hit, do ye?"
+
+"I 'lowed mebby ye mout pay hit fer me, Samson."
+
+"Ye done 'lowed plumb wrong. I come hyar ter see ef ye needed help,
+but hit 'pears ter me they're lettin' ye off easy."
+
+He turned on his heel, and went back to his mule. The men behind the
+trees began circling again. Samson mounted, and, with his chin well up,
+trotted back along the main street. It was over. The question was
+answered. The Hollmans regarded the truce as still effective. The fact
+that they were permitting him to ride out alive was a wordless
+assurance of that. Incidentally, he stood vindicated in the eyes of his
+own people.
+
+When Samson reached the mill it was ten o'clock. The men were soberer
+than they had been in the afternoon. McCager had seen to that. The boy
+replaced his exhausted mule with a borrowed mount. At midnight, as he
+drew near the cabin of the Widow Miller, he gave a long, low
+whippoorwill call, and promptly, from the shadow of the stile, a small
+tired figure rose up to greet him. For hours that little figure had
+been sitting there, silent, wide-eyed and terrified, nursing her knees
+in locked fingers that pressed tightly into the flesh. She had not
+spoken. She had hardly moved. She had only gazed out, keeping the vigil
+with a white face that was beginning to wear the drawn, heart-eating
+anxiety of the mountain woman; the woman whose code demands that she
+stand loyally to her clan's hatreds; the woman who has none of the
+man's excitement in stalking human game, which is also stalking him;
+the woman who must only stay at home and imagine a thousand terrors
+--and wait.
+
+A rooster was crowing, and the moon had set. Only the stars were left.
+
+"Sally," the boy reproved, "hit's most mornin', an' ye must be plumb
+fagged out. Why hain't you in bed?"
+
+"I 'lowed ye'd come by hyar," she told him simply, "and I waited fer
+ye. I knowed whar ye had went," she added, "an' I was skeered."
+
+"How did ye know?"
+
+"I heered thet Tam'rack was in the jail-house, an' somebody hed ter go
+ter Hixon. So, of course, I knowed hit would be you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Lescott stayed on a week after that simply in deference to Samson's
+insistence. To leave at once might savor of flight under fire, but when
+the week was out the painter turned his horse's head toward town, and
+his train swept him back to the Bluegrass and the East. As he gazed out
+of his car windows at great shoulders of rock and giant trees, things
+he was leaving behind, he felt a sudden twinge of something akin to
+homesickness. He knew that he should miss these great humps of
+mountains and the ragged grandeur of the scenery. With the rich
+smoothness of the Bluegrass, a sense of flatness and heaviness came to
+his lungs. Level metal roads and loamy fields invited his eye. The
+tobacco stalks rose in profuse heaviness of sticky green; the hemp
+waved its feathery tops; and woodlands were clear of underbrush--the
+pauper counties were behind him.
+
+A quiet of unbroken and deadly routine settled down on Misery. The
+conduct of the Souths in keeping hands off, and acknowledging the
+justice of Tamarack Spicer's jail sentence, had been their answer to
+the declaration of the Hollmans in letting Samson ride into and out of
+Hixon. The truce was established. When, a short time later, Tamarack
+left the country to become a railroad brakeman, Jesse Purvy passed the
+word that his men must, until further orders, desist from violence. The
+word had crept about that Samson, too, was going away, and, if this
+were true, Jesse felt that his future would be more secure than his
+past. Purvy believed Samson guilty, despite the exoneration of the
+hounds. Their use had been the idea of over-fervent relatives. He
+himself scoffed at their reliability.
+
+"I wouldn't believe no dog on oath," he declared. Besides, he
+preferred to blame Samson, since he was the head of the tribe and
+because he himself knew what cause Samson had to hate him. Perhaps,
+even now, Samson meant to have vengeance before leaving. Possibly,
+even, this ostentatious care to regard the truce was simply a shrewdly
+planned sham meant to disarm his suspicion.
+
+Until Samson went, if he did go, Jesse Purvy would redouble his
+caution. It would be a simple matter to have the boy shot to death, and
+end all question. Samson took no precautions to safeguard his life, but
+he had a safeguard none the less. Purvy felt sure that within a week
+after Samson fell, despite every care he might take, he, too, would
+fall. He was tired of being shot down. Purvy was growing old, and the
+fires of war were burning to embers in his veins. He was becoming more
+and more interested in other things. It dawned upon him that to be
+known as a friend of the poor held more allurement for gray-haired age
+than to be known as a master of assassins. It would be pleasant to sit
+undisturbed, and see his grandchildren grow up, and he recognized, with
+a sudden ferocity of repugnance, that he did not wish them to grow up
+as feud fighters. Purvy had not reformed, but, other things being
+equal, he would prefer to live and let live. He had reached that stage
+to which all successful villains come at some time, when he envied the
+placid contentment of respected virtues. Ordering Samson shot down was
+a last resort--one to be held in reserve until the end.
+
+So, along Misery and Crippleshin, the men of the factions held their
+fire while the summer spent itself, and over the mountain slopes the
+leaves began to turn, and the mast to ripen.
+
+Lescott had sent a box of books, and Samson had taken a team over to
+Hixon, and brought them back. It was a hard journey, attended with much
+plunging against the yokes and much straining of trace chains. Sally
+had gone with him. Samson was spending as much time as possible in her
+society now. The girl was saying little about his departure, but her
+eyes were reading, and without asking she knew that his going was
+inevitable. Many nights she cried herself to sleep, but, when he saw
+her, she was always the same blithe, bird-like creature that she had
+been before. She was philosophically sipping her honey while the sun
+shone.
+
+Samson read some of the books aloud to Sally, who had a child's
+passion for stories, and who could not have spelled them out for
+herself. He read badly, but to her it was the flower of scholastic
+accomplishment, and her untrained brain, sponge-like in its
+acquisitiveness, soaked up many new words and phrases which fell again
+quaintly from her lips in talk. Lescott had spent a week picking out
+those books. He had wanted them to argue for him; to feed the boy's
+hunger for education, and give him some forecast of the life that
+awaited him. His choice had been an effort to achieve _multum in
+parvo_, but Samson devoured them all from title page to _finis_
+line, and many of them he went back to, and digested again.
+
+He wrestled long and gently with his uncle, struggling to win the old
+man's consent to his departure. But Spicer South's brain was no longer
+plastic. What had been good enough for the past was good enough for the
+future. He sought to take the most tolerant view, and to believe that
+Samson was acting on conviction and not on an ingrate's impulse, but
+that was the best he could do, and he added to himself that Samson's
+was an abnormal and perverted conviction. Nevertheless, he arranged
+affairs so that his nephew should be able to meet financial needs, and
+to go where he chose in a fashion befitting a South. The old man was
+intensely proud, and, if the boy were bent on wasting himself, he
+should waste like a family head, and not appear a pauper among strangers.
+
+The autumn came, and the hills blazed out in their fanfare of splendid
+color. The broken skyline took on a wistful sweetness under the haze of
+"the Great Spirit's peace-pipe."
+
+The sugar trees flamed their fullest crimson that fall. The poplars
+were clear amber and the hickories russet and the oaks a deep burgundy.
+Lean hogs began to fill and fatten with their banqueting on beechnuts
+and acorns. Scattered quail came together in the conclave of the covey,
+and changed their summer call for the "hover" whistle. Shortly, the
+rains would strip the trees, and leave them naked. Then, Misery would
+vindicate its christener. But, now, as if to compensate in a few
+carnival days of champagne sparkle and color, the mountain world was
+burning out its summer life on a pyre of transient splendor.
+
+November came in bleakly, with a raw and devastating breath of
+fatality. The smile died from horizon to horizon, and for days cold
+rains beat and lashed the forests. And, toward the end of that month,
+came the day which Samson had set for his departure. He had harvested
+the corn, and put the farm in order. He had packed into his battered
+saddlebags what things were to go with him into his new life. The sun
+had set in a sickly bank of murky, red-lined clouds. His mule, which
+knew the road, and could make a night trip, stood saddled by the stile.
+A kinsman was to lead it back from Hixon when Samson had gone. The boy
+slowly put on his patched and mud-stained overcoat. His face was sullen
+and glowering. There was a lump in his throat, like the lump that had
+been there when he stood with his mother's arm about his shoulders, and
+watched the dogs chase a rabbit by his father's grave. Supper had been
+eaten in silence. Now that the hour of departure had come, he felt the
+guilt of the deserter. He realized how aged his uncle seemed, and how
+the old man hunched forward over the plate as they ate the last meal
+they should, for a long while, have together. It was only by sullen
+taciturnity that he could retain his composure.
+
+At the threshold, with the saddlebags over his left forearm and the
+rifle in his hand, he paused. His uncle stood at his elbow and the boy
+put out his hand.
+
+"Good-by, Unc' Spicer," was all he said. The old man, who had been his
+second father, shook hands. His face, too, was expressionless, but he
+felt that he was saying farewell to a soldier of genius who was
+abandoning the field. And he loved the boy with all the centered power
+of an isolated heart.
+
+"Hadn't ye better take a lantern?" he questioned.
+
+"No, I reckon I won't need none." And Samson went out, and mounted his
+mule.
+
+A half-mile along the road, he halted and dismounted. There, in a
+small cove, surrounded by a tangle of briars and blackberry bushes,
+stood a small and dilapidated "meeting house" and churchyard, which he
+must visit. He made his way through the rough undergrowth to the
+unkempt half-acre, and halted before the leaning headstones which
+marked two graves. With a sudden emotion, he swept the back of his hand
+across his eyes. He did not remove his hat, but he stood in the drizzle
+of cold rain for a moment of silence, and then he said:
+
+"Pap, I hain't fergot. I don't want ye ter think thet I've fergot."
+
+Before he arrived at the Widow Miller's, the rain had stopped and the
+clouds had broken. Back of them was a discouraged moon, which sometimes
+showed its face for a fitful moment, only to disappear. The wind was
+noisily floundering through the treetops. Near the stile, Samson gave
+his whippoorwill call. It was, perhaps, not quite so clear or true as
+usual, but that did not matter. There were no other whippoorwills
+calling at this season to confuse signals. He crossed the stile, and
+with a word quieted Sally's dog as it rose to challenge him, and then
+went with him, licking his hand.
+
+Sally opened the door, and smiled. She had spent the day nerving
+herself for this farewell, and at least until the moment of leave-
+taking she would be safe from tears. The Widow Miller and her son soon
+left them alone, and the boy and girl sat before the blazing logs.
+
+For a time, an awkward silence fell between them. Sally had donned her
+best dress, and braided her red-brown hair. She sat with her chin in
+her palms, and the fire kissed her cheeks and temples into color. That
+picture and the look in her eyes remained with Samson for a long while,
+and there were times of doubt and perplexity when he closed his eyes
+and steadied himself by visualizing it all again in his heart. At last,
+the boy rose, and went over to the corner where he had placed his gun.
+He took it up, and laid it on the hearth between them.
+
+"Sally," he said, "I wants ter tell ye some things thet I hain't never
+said ter nobody else. In the fust place, I wants ye ter keep this hyar
+gun fer me."
+
+The girl's eyes widened with surprise.
+
+"Hain't ye a-goin' ter take hit with ye, Samson?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I hain't a-goin' ter need hit down below. Nobody don't use 'em down
+thar. I've got my pistol, an' I reckon thet will be enough."
+
+"I'll take good keer of hit," she promised.
+
+The boy took out of his pockets a box of cartridges and a small
+package tied in a greasy rag.
+
+"Hit's loaded, Sally, an' hit's cleaned an' hit's greased. Hit's ready
+fer use."
+
+Again, she nodded in silent assent, and the boy began speaking in a
+slow, careful voice, which gradually mounted into tense emotion.
+
+"Sally, thet thar gun was my pap's. When he lay a-dyin', he gave hit
+ter me, an' he gave me a job ter do with hit. When I was a little
+feller, I used ter set up 'most all day, polishin' thet gun an' gittin'
+hit ready. I used ter go out in the woods, an' practise shootin' hit at
+things, tell I larned how ter handle hit. I reckon thar hain't many
+fellers round here thet kin beat me now." He paused, and the girl
+hastened to corroborate.
+
+"Thar hain't none, Samson."
+
+"There hain't nothin' in the world, Sally, thet I prizes like I does
+thet gun. Hit's got a job ter do ... Thar hain't but one person in the
+world I'd trust hit with. Thet's you.... I wants ye ter keep hit fer
+me, an' ter keep hit ready.... They thinks round hyar I'm quittin', but
+I hain't. I'm a-comin' back, an', when I comes, I'll need this hyar
+thing--an' I'll need hit bad." He took up the rifle, and ran his hand
+caressingly along its lock and barrel.
+
+"I don't know when I'm a-comin'," he said, slowly, "but, when I calls
+fer this, I'm shore a-goin' ter need hit quick. I wants hit ter be
+ready fer me, day er night. Maybe, nobody won't know I'm hyar....
+Maybe, I won't want nobody ter know.... But, when I whistles out thar
+like a whippoorwill, I wants ye ter slip out--an' fotch me thet gun!"
+
+He stopped, and bent forward. His face was tense, and his eyes were
+glinting with purpose. His lips were tight set and fanatical.
+
+"Samson," said the girl, reaching out and taking the weapon from his
+hands, "ef I'm alive when ye comes, I'll do hit. I promises ye. An',"
+she added, "ef I hain't alive, hit'll be standin' thar in thet corner.
+I'll grease hit, an' keep hit loaded, an' when ye calls, I'll fotch hit
+out thar to ye."
+
+The youth nodded. "I mout come anytime, but likely as not I'll hev ter
+come a-fightin' when I comes."
+
+Next, he produced an envelope.
+
+"This here is a letter I've done writ ter myself," he explained. He
+drew out the sheet, and read:
+
+"Samson, come back." Then he handed the missive to the girl. "Thet
+there is addressed ter me, in care of Mr. Lescott.... Ef anything
+happens--ef Unc' Spicer needs me--I wants yer ter mail thet ter me
+quick. He says as how he won't never call me back, but, Sally, I wants
+thet you shall send fer me, ef they needs me. I hain't a-goin' ter
+write no letters home. Unc' Spicer can't read, an' you can't read much
+either. But I'll plumb shore be thinkin' about ye day an' night."
+
+She gulped and nodded.
+
+"Yes, Samson," was all she said.
+
+The boy rose.
+
+"I reckon I'd better be gettin' along," he announced.
+
+The girl suddenly reached out both hands, and seized his coat. She
+held him tight, and rose, facing him. Her upturned face grew very
+pallid, and her eyes widened. They were dry, and her lips were tightly
+closed, but, through the tearless pupils, in the firelight, the boy
+could read her soul, and her soul was sobbing.
+
+He drew her toward him, and held her very tight.
+
+"Sally," he said, in a voice which threatened to choke, "I wants ye
+ter take keer of yeself. Ye hain't like these other gals round here. Ye
+hain't got big hands an' feet. Ye kain't stand es much es they kin.
+Don't stay out in the night air too much--an', Sally--fer God's sake
+take keer of yeself!" He broke off, and picked up his hat.
+
+"An' that gun, Sally," he repeated at the door, "that there's the most
+precious thing I've got. I loves hit better then anything--take keer of
+hit."
+
+Again, she caught at his shoulders.
+
+"Does ye love hit better'n ye do me, Samson?" she demanded.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"I reckon ye knows how much I loves ye, Sally," he said, slowly, "but
+I've done made a promise, an' thet gun's a-goin' ter keep hit fer me."
+
+They went together out to the stile, he still carrying his rifle, as
+though loath to let it go, and she crossed with him to the road.
+
+As he untied his reins, she threw her arms about his neck, and for a
+long while they stood there under the clouds and stars, as he held her
+close. There was no eloquence of leave-taking, no professions of
+undying love, for these two hearts were inarticulate and dizzily
+clinging to a wilderness code of self-repression--and they had reached
+a point where speech would have swept them both away to a break-down.
+
+But as they stood, their arms gripping each other, each heart pounding
+on the other's breast, it was with a pulsing that spoke in the torrent
+their lips dammed, and between the two even in this farewell embrace
+was the rifle which stood emblematical of the man's life and mission
+and heredity. Its cold metal lay in a line between their warm breasts,
+separating, yet uniting them, and they clung to each other across its
+rigid barrel, as a man and woman may cling with the child between them
+which belongs to both, and makes them one. As yet, she had shed no
+tears. Then, he mounted and was swallowed in the dark. It was not until
+the thud of his mule's hoofs were lost in the distance that the girl
+climbed back to the top of the stile, and dropped down. Then, she
+lifted the gun and pressed it close to her bosom, and sat silently
+sobbing for a long while.
+
+"He's done gone away," she moaned, "an' he won't never come back no
+more--but ef he does come"--she raised her eyes to the stars as though
+calling them to witness--"ef he does come, I'll shore be a-waitin'.
+Lord God, make him come back!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The boy from Misery rode slowly toward Hixon. At times, the moon
+struggled out and made the shadows black along the way. At other times,
+it was like riding in a huge caldron of pitch. When he passed into that
+stretch of country at whose heart Jesse Purvy dwelt, he raised his
+voice in song. His singing was very bad, and the ballad lacked tune,
+but it served its purpose of saving him from the suspicion of
+furtiveness. Though the front of the house was blank, behind its heavy
+shutters he knew that his coming might be noted, and night-riding at
+this particular spot might be misconstrued in the absence of frank
+warning.
+
+The correctness of his inference brought a brief smile to his lips
+when he crossed the creek that skirted the orchard, and heard a stable
+door creak softly behind him. He was to be followed again--and watched,
+but he did not look back or pause to listen for the hoofbeats of his
+unsolicited escort. On the soft mud of the road, he would hardly have
+heard them, had he bent his ear and drawn rein. He rode at a walk, for
+his train would not leave until five o'clock in the morning. There was
+time in plenty.
+
+It was cold and depressing as he trudged the empty streets from the
+livery stable to the railroad station, carrying his saddlebags over his
+arm. His last farewell had been taken when he left the old mule behind
+in the rickety livery stable. It had been unemotional, too, but the
+ragged creature had raised its stubborn head, and rubbed its soft nose
+against his shoulder as though in realization of the parting--and
+unwilling realization. He had roughly laid his hand for a moment on the
+muzzle, and turned on his heel.
+
+He was all unconscious that he presented a figure which would seem
+ludicrous in the great world to which he had looked with such
+eagerness. The lamps burned murkily about the railroad station, and a
+heavy fog cloaked the hills. At last he heard the whistle and saw the
+blazing headlight, and a minute later he had pushed his way into the
+smoking-car and dropped his saddlebags on the seat beside him. Then,
+for the first time, he saw and recognized his watchers. Purvy meant to
+have Samson shadowed as far as Lexington, and his movements from that
+point definitely reported. Jim Asberry and Aaron Hollis were the chosen
+spies. He did not speak to the two enemies who took seats across the
+car, but his face hardened, and his brows came together in a black scowl.
+
+"When I gits back," he promised himself, "you'll be one of the fust
+folks I'll look fer, Jim Asberry, damn ye! All I hopes is thet nobody
+else don't git ye fust. Ye b'longs ter me."
+
+He was not quite certain yet that Jim Asberry had murdered his father,
+but he knew that Asberry was one of the coterie of "killers" who took
+their blood hire from Purvy, and he knew that Asberry had sworn to
+"git" him. To sit in the same car with these men and to force himself
+to withhold his hand, was a hard bullet for Samson South to chew, but
+he had bided his time thus far, and he would bide it to the end. When
+that end came, it would also be the end for Purvy and Asberry. He
+disliked Hollis, too, but with a less definite and intense hatred.
+Samson wished that one of the henchmen would make a move toward attack.
+He made no concealment of his own readiness. He removed both overcoat
+and coat, leaving exposed to view the heavy revolver which was strapped
+under his left arm. He even unbuttoned the leather flap of the holster,
+and then being cleared for action, sat glowering across the aisle, with
+his eyes not on the faces but upon the hands of the two Purvy spies.
+
+The wrench of partings, the long raw ride and dis-spiriting gloom of
+the darkness before dawn had taken out of the boy's mind all the
+sparkle of anticipation and left only melancholy and hate. He felt for
+the moment that, had these men attacked him and thrown him back into
+the life he was leaving, back into the war without fault on his part,
+he would be glad. The fierce activity of fighting would be welcome to
+his mood. He longed for the appeasement of a thoroughly satisfied
+vengeance. But the two watchers across the car were not ordered to
+fight and so they made no move. They did not seem to see Samson. They
+did not appear to have noticed his inviting readiness for combat. They
+did not remove their coats. At Lexington, where he had several hours to
+wait, Samson bought a "snack" at a restaurant near the station and then
+strolled about the adjacent streets, still carrying his saddlebags, for
+he knew nothing of the workings of check-rooms. When he returned to the
+depot with his open wallet in his hand, and asked for a ticket to New
+York, the agent looked up and his lips unguardedly broke into a smile
+of amusement. It was a good-humored smile, but Samson saw that it was
+inspired by some sort of joke, and he divined that the joke was--himself!
+
+"What's the matter?" he inquired very quietly, though his chin
+stiffened. "Don't ye sell tickets ter New York?"
+
+The man behind the grilled wicket read a spirit as swift to resent
+ridicule as that of d'Artagnan had been when he rode his orange-colored
+nag into the streets of Paris. His face sobered, and his manner became
+attentive. He was wondering what complications lay ahead of this raw
+creature whose crudity of appearance was so at odds with the compelling
+quality of his eyes.
+
+"Do you want a Pullman reservation?" he asked.
+
+"What's thet?" The boy put the question with a steadiness of gaze that
+seemed to defy the agent to entertain even a subconsciously critical
+thought as to his ignorance.
+
+The ticket man explained sleeping- and dining-cars. He had rather
+expected the boy to choose the day coach, but Samson merely said:
+
+"I wants the best thar is." He counted out the additional money, and
+turned gravely from the window. The sleeping-car to which he was
+assigned was almost empty, but he felt upon him the interested gaze of
+those few eyes that were turned toward his entrance. He engaged every
+pair with a pair very clear and steady and undropping, until somehow
+each lip that had started to twist in amusement straightened, and the
+twinkle that rose at first glance sobered at second. He did not know
+why an old gentleman in a plaid traveling cap, who looked up from a
+magazine, turned his gaze out of the window with an expression of grave
+thoughtfulness. To himself, the old gentleman was irrelevantly quoting
+a line or two of verse:
+
+  "' ... Unmade, unhandled, unmeet--
+  Ye pushed them raw to the battle, as ye picked them
+         raw from the street--'"
+
+"Only," added the old gentleman under his breath, "this one hasn't
+even the training of the streets--but with those eyes he'll get
+somewhere."
+
+The porter paused and asked to see Samson's ticket. Mentally, he
+observed:
+
+"Po' white trash!" Then, he looked again, for the boy's eyes were
+discomfortingly on his fat, black face, and the porter straightway
+decided to be polite. Yet, for all his specious seeming of unconcern,
+Samson was waking to the fact that he was a scarecrow, and his
+sensitive pride made him cut his meals short in the dining-car, where
+he was kept busy beating down inquisitive eyes with his defiant gaze.
+He resolved after some thought upon a definite policy. It was a very
+old policy, but to him new--and a discovery. He would change nothing in
+himself that involved a surrender of code or conviction. But, wherever
+it could be done with honor, he would concede to custom. He had come to
+learn, not to give an exhibition of stubbornness. Whatever the outside
+world could offer with a recommendation to his good sense, that thing
+he would adopt and make his own.
+
+It was late in the second afternoon when he stepped from the train at
+Jersey City, to be engulfed in an unimagined roar and congestion. Here,
+it was impossible to hold his own against the unconcealed laughter of
+the many, and he stood for an instant glaring about like a caged tiger,
+while three currents of humanity separated and flowed toward the three
+ferry exits. It was a moment of longing for the quiet of his ancient
+hills, where nothing more formidable than blood enemies existed to
+disquiet and perplex a man's philosophy. Those were things he
+understood--and even enemies at home did not laugh at a man's
+peculiarities. For the first time in his life, Samson felt a tremor of
+something like terror, terror of a great, vague thing, too vast and
+intangible to combat, and possessed of the measureless power of many
+hurricanes. Then, he saw the smiling face of Lescott, and Lescott's
+extended hand. Even Lescott, immaculately garbed and fur-coated, seemed
+almost a stranger, and the boy's feeling of intimacy froze to inward
+constraint and diffidence. But Lescott knew nothing of that. The stoic
+in Samson held true, masking his emotions.
+
+"So you came," said the New Yorker, heartily, grasping the boy's hand.
+"Where's your luggage? We'll just pick that up, and make a dash for the
+ferry."
+
+"Hyar hit is," replied Samson, who still carried his saddlebags. The
+painter's eyes twinkled, but the mirth was so frank and friendly that
+the boy, instead of glaring in defiance, grinned responsively.
+
+"Right, oh!" laughed Lescott. "I thought maybe you'd brought a trunk,
+but it's the wise man who travels light."
+
+"I reckon I'm pretty green," acknowledged the youth somewhat ruefully.
+"But I hain't been studyin' on what I looked like. I reckon thet don't
+make much difference."
+
+"Not much," affirmed the other, with conviction. "Let the men with
+little souls spend their thought on that."
+
+The artist watched his protégé narrowly as they took their places
+against the forward rail of the ferry-deck, and the boat stood out into
+the crashing water traffic of North River. What Samson saw must be
+absolutely bewildering. Ears attuned to hear a breaking twig must ache
+to this hoarse shrieking of whistles. To the west, in the evening's
+fading color, the sky-line of lower Manhattan bit the sky with its
+serried line of fangs.
+
+Yet, Samson leaned on the rail without comment, and his face told
+nothing. Lescott waited for some expression, and, when none came, he
+casually suggested:
+
+"Samson, that is considered rather an impressive panorama over there.
+What do you think of it?"
+
+"Ef somebody was ter ask ye ter describe the shape of a rainstorm,
+what would ye say?" countered the boy.
+
+Lescott laughed.
+
+"I guess I wouldn't try to say."
+
+"I reckon," replied the mountaineer, "I won't try, neither."
+
+"Do you find it anything like the thing expected?" No New Yorker can
+allow a stranger to be unimpressed with that sky-line.
+
+"I didn't have no notion what to expect." Samson's voice was matter-of-
+fact. "I 'lowed I'd jest wait and see."
+
+He followed Lescott out to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and
+stepped with him into the tonneau of the painter's waiting car. Lescott
+lived with his family up-town, for it happened that, had his canvases
+possessed no value whatever, he would still have been in a position to
+drive his motor, and follow his impulses about the world. Lescott
+himself had found it necessary to overcome family opposition when he
+had determined to follow the career of painting. His people had been in
+finance, and they had expected him to take the position to which he
+logically fell heir in activities that center about Wall Street. He,
+too, had at first been regarded as recreant to traditions. For that
+reason, he felt a full sympathy with Samson. The painter's place in the
+social world--although he preferred his other world of Art--was so
+secure that he was free from any petty embarrassment in standing
+sponsor for a wild man from the hills. If he did not take the boy to
+his home, it was because he understood that a life which must be not
+only full of early embarrassment, but positively revolutionary, should
+be approached by easy stages. Consequently, the car turned down Fifth
+Avenue, passed under the arch, and drew up before a door just off
+Washington Square, where the landscape painter had a studio suite.
+There were sleeping-rooms and such accessories as seemed to the boy
+unheard-of luxury, though Lescott regarded the place as a makeshift
+annex to his home establishment.
+
+"You'd better take your time in selecting permanent quarters," was his
+careless fashion of explaining to Samson. "It's just as well not to
+hurry. You are to stay here with me, as long as you will."
+
+"I'm obleeged ter ye," replied the boy, to whose training in open-
+doored hospitality the invitation seemed only natural. The evening meal
+was brought in from a neighboring hotel, and the two men dined before
+an open fire, Samson eating in mountain silence, while his host chatted
+and asked questions. The place was quiet for New York, but to Samson it
+seemed an insufferable pandemonium. He found himself longing for the
+velvet-soft quiet of the nightfalls he had known.
+
+"Samson," suggested the painter, when the dinner things had been
+carried out and they were alone, "you are here for two purposes: first
+to study painting; second, to educate and equip yourself for coming
+conditions. It's going to take work, more work, and then some more work."
+
+"I hain't skeered of work."
+
+"I believe that. Also, you must keep out of trouble. You've got to
+ride your fighting instinct with a strong curb."
+
+"I don't 'low to let nobody run over me." The statement was not
+argumentative; only an announcement of a principle which was not
+subject to modification.
+
+"All right, but until you learn the ropes, let me advise you."
+
+The boy gazed into the fire for a few moments of silence.
+
+"I gives ye my hand on thet," he promised.
+
+At eleven o'clock the painter, having shown his guest over the
+premises, said good-night, and went up-town to his own house. Samson
+lay a long while awake, with many disquieting reflections. Before his
+closed eyes rose insistently the picture of a smoky cabin with a
+puncheon floor and of a girl upon whose cheeks and temples flickered
+orange and vermilion lights. To his ears came the roar of elevated
+trains, and, since a fog had risen over the Hudson, the endless night-
+splitting screams of brazen-throated ferry whistles. He tossed on a
+mattress which seemed hard and comfortless, and longed for a feather-bed.
+
+"Good-night, Sally," he almost groaned. "I wisht I was back thar whar
+I belongs." ... And Sally, more than a thousand miles away, was
+shivering on the top of a stile with a white, grief-torn little face,
+wishing that, too.
+
+Meanwhile Lescott, letting himself into a house overlooking the Park,
+was hailed by a chorus of voices from the dining-room. He turned and
+went in to join a gay group just back from the opera. As he
+thoughtfully mixed himself a highball, they bombarded him with questions.
+
+"Why didn't you bring your barbarian with you?" demanded a dark-eyed
+girl, who looked very much as Lescott himself might have looked had he
+been a girl--and very young and lovely. The painter always thought of
+his sister as the family's _edition de luxe_. Now, she flashed on
+him an affectionate smile, and added: "We have been waiting to see him.
+Must we go to bed disappointed?"
+
+George stood looking down on them, and tinkled the ice in his glass.
+
+"He wasn't brought on for purposes of exhibition, Drennie," he smiled.
+"I was afraid, if he came in here in the fashion of his arrival--carrying
+his saddlebags--you ultra-civilized folk might have laughed."
+
+A roar of laughter at the picture vindicated Lescott's assumption.
+
+"No! Now, actually with saddlebags?" echoed a young fellow with a
+likeable face which was for the moment incredulously amused. "That goes
+Dick Whittington one better. You do make some rare discoveries, George.
+We celebrate you."
+
+"Thanks, Horton," commented the painter, dryly. "When you New Yorkers
+have learned what these barbarians already know, the control of your
+over-sensitized risibles and a courtesy deeper than your shirt-fronts
+--maybe I'll let you have a look. Meantime, I'm much too fond of all of
+you to risk letting you laugh at my barbarian."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The first peep of daylight through the studio skylight found the
+mountain boy awake. Before the daylight came he had seen the stars
+through its panes. Lescott's servant, temporarily assigned to the
+studio, was still sleeping when Samson dressed and went out. As he put
+on his clothes, he followed his custom of strapping the pistol-holster
+under his left armpit outside his shirt. He did it with no particular
+thought and from force of habit. His steps carried him first into
+Washington Square, at this cheerless hour empty except for a shivering
+and huddled figure on a bench and a rattling milk-cart. The boy
+wandered aimlessly until, an hour later, he found himself on Bleecker
+Street, as that thoroughfare began to awaken and take up its day's
+activity. The smaller shops that lie in the shadow of the elevated
+trestle were opening their doors. Samson had been reflecting on the
+amused glances he had inspired yesterday and, when he came to a store
+with a tawdry window display of haberdashery and ready-made clothing,
+he decided to go in and investigate.
+
+Evidently, the garments he now wore gave him an appearance of poverty
+and meanness, which did not comport with the dignity of a South. Had
+any one else criticized his appearance his resentment would have
+blazed, but he could make voluntary admissions. The shopkeeper's
+curiosity was somewhat piqued by a manner of speech and appearance
+which, were, to him, new, and which he could not classify. His first
+impression of the boy in the stained suit, slouch hat, and patched
+overcoat, was much the same as that which the Pullman porter had
+mentally summed up as, "Po' white trash"; but the Yiddish shopman could
+not place his prospective customer under any head or type with which he
+was familiar. He was neither "kike," "wop," "rough-neck," nor beggar,
+and, as the proprietor laid out his wares with unctuous solicitude, he
+was, also, studying his unresponsive and early visitor. When Samson,
+for the purpose of trying on a coat and vest, took off his own outer
+garments, and displayed, without apology or explanation, a huge and
+murderous-looking revolver, the merchant became nervously excited. Had
+Samson made gratifying purchases, he might have seen nothing, but it
+occurred to the mountaineer, just as he was counting money from a
+stuffed purse, that it would perhaps be wiser to wait and consult
+Lescott in matters of sartorial selection. So, with incisive bluntness,
+he countermanded his order--and made an enemy. The shopkeeper, standing
+at the door of his basement establishment, combed his beard with his
+fingers, and thought regretfully of the fat wallet; and, a minute
+after, when two policemen came by, walking together, he awoke suddenly
+to his responsibilities as a citizen. He pointed to the figure now half
+a block away.
+
+"Dat feller," he said, "chust vent out off my blace. He's got a young
+cannon strapped to his vish-bone. I don't know if he's chust a rube, or
+if maybe he's bad. Anyway, he's a gun-toter."
+
+The two patrolmen only nodded, and sauntered on. They did not hurry,
+but neither did Samson. Pausing to gaze into a window filled with
+Italian sweetmeats, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to find
+himself looking into two pairs of accusing eyes.
+
+"What's your game?" shortly demanded one of the officers.
+
+"What's ther matter?" countered Samson, as tartly as he had been
+questioned.
+
+"Don't you know better than to tote a gun around this town?"
+
+"I reckon thet's my business, hain't hit?"
+
+The boy stepped back, and shook the offending hand from his shoulder.
+His gorge was rising, but he controlled it, and turned on his heel,
+with the manner of one saying the final word.
+
+"I reckon ye're a-barkin' up ther wrong tree."
+
+"Not by a damned sight, we ain't!" One of the patrolmen seized and
+pinioned his arms, while the second threateningly lifted his club.
+
+"Don't try to start anything, young feller," he warned. The street was
+awake now and the ever-curious crowd began to gather. The big officer
+at Samson's back held his arms locked and gave curt directions to his
+partner. "Go through him, Quinn."
+
+Samson recognized that he was in the hands of the law, and a different
+sort of law from that which he had known on Misery. He made no effort
+to struggle, but looked very straight and unblinkingly into the eyes of
+the club-wielder.
+
+"Don't ye hit me with thet thing," he said, quietly. "I warns ye."
+
+The officer laughed as he ran his left hand over Samson's hips and
+chest, and brought out the offending weapon.
+
+"I guess that's about all. We'll let you explain the rest of it to the
+judge. It's a trick on the Island for yours."
+
+The Island meant nothing to Samson South, but the derisive laughter of
+the crowd, and the roughness with which the two bluecoats swung him
+around, and ordered him to march, set on edge every defiant nerve.
+Still, he gazed directly into the faces of his captors, and inquired
+with a cruelly forced calm:
+
+"Does ye 'low ter take me ter the jail-house?"
+
+"Can that rube stuff. Get along, get along!" And the officers started
+him on his journey with a shove that sent him lurching and stumbling
+forward. Then, the curb of control slipped. The prisoner wheeled, his
+face distorted with passion, and lashed out with his fist to the face
+of the biggest patrolman. It was a foolish and hopeless attack, as the
+boy realized, but in his code it was necessary. One must resent
+gratuitous insult whatever the odds, and he fought with such
+concentrated fury and swiftness, after his rude hill method of "fist
+and skull," driving in terrific blows with hands and head, that the
+crowd breathed deep with the delicious excitement of the combat--and
+regretted its brevity.
+
+The amazed officers, for an instant handicapped by their surprise,
+since they were expecting to monopolize the brutality of the occasion,
+came to their senses, and had instant recourse to the comforting
+reinforcement of their locust clubs. The boy went down under a rat-tat
+of night sticks, which left him as groggy and easy to handle as a
+fainting woman.
+
+"You got ter hand it ter dat guy," commented a sweater-clad onlooker,
+as they dragged Samson into a doorway to await the wagon. "He was goin'
+some while he lasted."
+
+The boy was conscious again, though still faint, when the desk
+sergeant wrote on the station-house blotter:
+
+"Carrying a deadly weapon, and resisting an officer."
+
+The lieutenant had strolled in, and was contemplatively turning over
+in his hand the heavy forty-five-calibre Colt.
+
+"Some rod that!" he announced. "We don't get many like it here. Where
+did you breeze in from, young fellow?"
+
+"Thet's my business," growled Samson. Then, he added: "I'll be
+obleeged if ye'll send word ter Mr. George Lescott ter come an' bail me
+out."
+
+"You seem to know the procedure," remarked the desk sergeant, with a
+smile. "Who is Mr. George Lescott, and where's his hang-out?"
+
+One of the arresting officers looked up from wiping with his
+handkerchief the sweat-band of his helmet.
+
+"George Lescott?" he repeated. "I know him. He's got one of them
+studios just off Washington Square. He drives down-town in a car the
+size of the Olympic. I don't know how he'd get acquainted with a boob
+like this."
+
+"Oh, well!" the desk sergeant yawned. "Stick him in the cage. We'll
+call up this Lescott party later on. I guess he's still in the hay, and
+it might make him peevish to wake him up."
+
+Left alone in the police-station cell, the boy began to think. First
+of all, he was puzzled. He had fared forth peaceably, and spoken to no
+one except the storekeeper. To force a man into peace by denying him
+his gun, seemed as unreasonable as to prevent fisticuffs by cutting off
+hands. But, also, a deep sense of shame swept over him, and scalded
+him. Getting into trouble here was, somehow, different from getting
+into trouble at home--and, in some strange way, bitterly humiliating.
+
+Lescott had risen early, meaning to go down to the studio, and have
+breakfast with Samson. His mother and sister were leaving for Bermuda
+by a nine o'clock sailing. Consequently, eight o'clock found the
+household gathered in the breakfast-room, supplemented by Mr. Wilfred
+Horton, whose orchids Adrienne Lescott was wearing, and whose luggage
+was already at the wharf.
+
+"Since Wilfred is in the party to take care of things, and look after
+you," suggested Lescott, as he came into the room a trifle late, "I
+think I'll say good-by here, and run along to the studio. Samson is
+probably feeling like a new boy in school this morning. You'll find the
+usual litter of flowers and fiction in your staterooms to attest my
+filial and brotherly devotion."
+
+"Was the brotherly sentiment addressed to me?" inquired Wilfred, with
+an unsmiling and brazen gravity that brought to the girl's eyes and
+lips a half-mocking and wholly decorative twinkle of amusement.
+
+"Just because I try to be a sister to you, Wilfred," she calmly
+reproved, "I can't undertake to make my brother do it, too. Besides, he
+couldn't be a sister to you."
+
+"But by dropping that attitude--which is entirely gratuitous--you will
+compel him to assume it. My sentiment as regards brotherly love is
+brief and terse, 'Let George do it!'" Mr. Horton was complacently
+consuming his breakfast with an excellent appetite, to which the
+prospect of six weeks among Bermuda lilies with Adrienne lent a fillip.
+
+"So, brother-to-be," he continued, "you have my permission to run
+along down-town, and feed your savage."
+
+"Beg pardon, sir!" The Lescott butler leaned close to the painter's
+ear, and spoke with a note of apology as though deploring the necessity
+of broaching such a subject. "But will you kindly speak with the
+Macdougal Street Police Station?"
+
+"With the what?" Lescott turned in surprise, while Horton surrendered
+himself to unrestrained and boisterous laughter.
+
+"The barbarian!" he exclaimed. "I call that snappy work. Twelve hours
+in New York, and a run-in with the police! I've noticed," he added, as
+the painter hurriedly quitted the room, "that, when you take the bad
+man out of his own cock-pit, he rarely lasts as far as the second round."
+
+"It occurs to me, Wilfred," suggested Adrienne, with the hint of
+warning in her voice, "that you may be just a trifle overdoing your
+attitude of amusement as to this barbarian. George is fond of him, and
+believes in him, and George is quite often right in his judgment."
+
+"George," added Mrs. Lescott, "had a broken arm down there in the
+mountains, and these people were kind to him in many ways. I wish I
+could see Mr. South, and thank him."
+
+Lescott's manner over the telephone was indicating to a surprised desk
+sergeant a decidedly greater interest than had been anticipated, and,
+after a brief and pointed conversation in that quarter, he called
+another number. It was a private number, not included in the telephone
+book and communicated with the residence of an attorney who would not
+have permitted the generality of clients to disturb him in advance of
+office hours.
+
+A realization that the "gun-lugger" had friends "higher up" percolated
+at the station-house in another hour, when a limousine halted at the
+door, and a legal celebrity, whose ways were not the ways of police
+stations or magistrates' courts, stepped to the curb.
+
+"I am waiting to meet Mr. Lescott," announced the Honorable Mr.
+Wickliffe, curtly.
+
+When a continuance of the case had been secured, and bond given, the
+famous lawyer and Samson lunched together at the studio as Lescott's
+guests, and, after the legal luminary had thawed the boy's native
+reserve and wrung from him his story, he was interested enough to use
+all his eloquence and logic in his efforts to show the mountaineer what
+inherent necessities of justice lay back of seemingly restrictive laws.
+
+"You simply 'got in bad' through your failure to understand conditions
+here," laughed the lawyer. "I guess we can pull you through, but in
+future you'll have to submit to some guidance, my boy."
+
+And Samson, rather to Lescott's surprise, nodded his head with only a
+ghost of resentment. From friends, he was willing to learn.
+
+Lescott had been afraid that this initial experience would have an
+extinguishing effect on Samson's ambitions. He half-expected to hear
+the dogged announcement, "I reckon I'll go back home. I don't b'long
+hyar nohow." But no such remark came.
+
+One night, they sat in the cafe of an old French hostelry where, in
+the polyglot chatter of three languages, one hears much shop talk of
+art and literature. Between the mirrored walls, Samson was for the
+first time glimpsing the shallow sparkle of Bohemia. The orchestra was
+playing an appealing waltz. Among the diners were women gowned as he
+had never seen women gowned before. They sat with men, and met the
+challenge of ardent glances with dreamy eyes. They hummed an
+accompaniment to the air, and sometimes loudly and publicly quarreled.
+But Samson looked on as taciturn and unmoved as though he had never
+dined elsewhere. And yet, his eyes were busy, for suddenly he laid down
+his knife, and picked up his fork.
+
+"Hit 'pears like I've got a passel of things ter l'arn," he said,
+earnestly. "I reckon I mout as well begin by l'arnin' how ter eat." He
+had heretofore regarded a fork only as a skewer with which to hold meat
+in the cutting.
+
+Lescott laughed.
+
+"Most rules of social usage," he explained, "go back to the test of
+efficiency. It is considered good form to eat with the fork,
+principally because it is more efficient,"
+
+The boy nodded.
+
+"All right," he acquiesced. "You l'arn me all them things, an' I'll be
+obleeged ter ye. Things is diff'rent in diff'rent places. I reckon the
+Souths hes a right ter behave es good es anybody."
+
+When a man, whose youth and courage are at their zenith, and whose
+brain is tuned to concert pitch, is thrown neck and crop out of squalid
+isolation into the melting pot of Manhattan, puzzling problems of
+readjustment must follow. Samson's half-starved mind was reaching out
+squid-like tentacles in every direction. He was saying little, seeing
+much, not yet coordinating or tabulating, but grimly bolting every
+morsel of enlightenment. Later, he would digest; now, he only gorged.
+Before he could hope to benefit by the advanced instruction of the life
+-classes, he must toil and sweat over the primer stages of drawing.
+Several months were spent laboring with charcoal and paper over plaster
+casts in Lescott's studio, and Lescott himself played instructor. When
+the skylight darkened with the coming of evening, the boy whose
+mountain nature cried out for exercise went for long tramps that
+carried him over many miles of city pavements, and after that, when the
+gas was lit, he turned, still insatiably hungry, to volumes of history,
+and algebra, and facts. So gluttonous was his protégé's application
+that the painter felt called on to remonstrate against the danger of
+overwork. But Samson only laughed; that was one of the things he had
+learned to do since he left the mountains.
+
+"I reckon," he drawled, "that as long as I'm at work, I kin keep out
+of trouble. Seems like that's the only way I kin do it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sloop-rigged boat with a crew of two was dancing before a brisk
+breeze through blue Bermuda waters. Off to the right, Hamilton rose
+sheer and colorful from the bay. At the tiller sat the white-clad
+figure of Adrienne Lescott. Puffs of wind that whipped the tautly
+bellying sheets lashed her dark hair about her face. Her lips, vividly
+red like poppy-petals, were just now curved into an amused smile, which
+made them even more than ordinarily kissable and tantalizing. Her
+companion was neglecting his nominal duty of tending the sheet to watch
+her.
+
+"Wilfred," she teased, "your contrast is quite startling--and, in a
+way, effective. From head to foot, you are spotless white--but your
+scowl is absolutely 'the blackest black that our eyes endure.' And,"
+she added, in an injured voice, "I'm sure I've been very nice to you."
+
+"I have not yet begun to scowl," he assured her, and proceeded to show
+what superlatives of saturnine expression he held in reserve. "See
+here, Drennie, I know perfectly well that I'm a sheer imbecile to
+reveal the fact that you've made me mad. It pleases you too perfectly.
+It makes you happier than is good for you, but----"
+
+"It's a terrible thing to make me happy, isn't it?" she inquired,
+sweetly.
+
+"Unspeakably so, when you derive happiness from the torture of your
+fellow-man."
+
+"My brother-man," she amiably corrected him.
+
+"Good Lord!" he groaned in desperation. "I ought to turn cave man, and
+seize you by the hair--and drag you to the nearest minister--or
+prophet, or whoever could marry us. Then, after the ceremony, I ought
+to drag you to my own grotto, and beat you."
+
+"Would I have to wear my wedding ring in my nose?" She put the
+question with the manner of one much interested in acquiring useful
+information.
+
+"Drennie, for the nine-hundred-thousandth time; simply, in the
+interests of harmony and to break the deadlock, will you marry me?"
+
+"Not this afternoon," she smiled. "Watch for the boom! I'm going to
+bring her round."
+
+The young man promptly ducked his head, and played out the line, as
+the boat dipped her masthead waterward, and came about on the other
+tack. When the sails were again drumming under the fingers of the wind,
+she added:
+
+"Besides, I'm not sure that harmony is what I want."
+
+"You know you'll have to marry me in the end. Why not now?" he
+persisted, doggedly. "We are simply wasting our youth, dear."
+
+His tone had become so calamitous that the girl could not restrain a
+peal of very musical laughter.
+
+"Am I so very funny?" he inquired, with dignity.
+
+"You are, when you are so very tragic," she assured him.
+
+He realized that his temper was merely a challenge to her teasing, and
+he wisely fell back into his customary attitude of unruffled insouciance.
+
+"Drennie, you have held me off since we were children. I believe I
+first announced my intention of marrying you when you were twelve. That
+intention remains unaltered. More: it is unalterable and inevitable. My
+reasons for wanting to needn't be rehearsed. It would take too long. I
+regard you as possessed of an alert and remarkable mind--one worthy of
+companionship with my own." Despite the frivolous badinage of his words
+and the humorous smile of his lips, his eyes hinted at an underlying
+intensity. "With no desire to flatter or spoil you, I find your
+personal aspect pleasing enough to satisfy me. And then, while a man
+should avoid emotionalism, I am in love with you." He moved over to a
+place in the sternsheets, and his face became intensely earnest. He
+dropped his hand over hers as it lay on the tiller shaft. "God knows,
+dear," he exclaimed, "how much I love you!"
+
+Her eyes, after holding his for a moment, fell to the hand which still
+imprisoned her own. She shook her head, not in anger, but with a manner
+of gentle denial, until he released her fingers and stepped back.
+
+"You are a dear, Wilfred," she comforted, "and I couldn't manage to
+get on without you, but you aren't marriageable--at least, not yet."
+
+"Why not?" he argued. "I've stood back and twirled my thumbs all
+through your _début_ winter. I've been Patience without the
+comfort of a pedestal. Now, will you give me three minutes to show you
+that you are not acting fairly, or nicely at all?"
+
+"Duck!" warned the girl, and once more they fell silent in the sheer
+physical delight of two healthy young animals, clean-blooded and sport-
+loving, as the tall jib swept down; the "high side" swept up, and the
+boat hung for an exhilarating moment on the verge of capsizing. As it
+righted itself again, like the craft of a daring airman banking the
+pylons, the girl gave him a bright nod. "Now, go ahead," she acceded,
+"you have three minutes to put yourself in nomination as the exemplar
+of your age and times."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The young man settled back, and stuffed tobacco into a battered pipe.
+Then, with a lightness of tone which was assumed as a defense against
+her mischievous teasing, he began:
+
+"Very well, Drennie. When you were twelve, which is at best an
+unimpressive age for the female of the species, I was eighteen, and all
+the world knows that at eighteen a man is very mature and important.
+You wore pigtails then, and it took a prophet's eye to foresee how
+wonderfully you were going to emerge from your chrysalis."
+
+The idolatry of his eyes told how wonderful she seemed to him now.
+
+"Yet, I fell in love with you, and I said to myself, 'I'll wait for
+her.' However, I didn't want to wait eternally. For eight years, I have
+danced willing attendance--following you through nursery, younger-set
+and _débutante_ stages. In short, with no wish to trumpet too
+loudly my own virtues, I've been your _Fidus Achates_." His voice
+dropped from its pitch of antic whimsey, and became for a moment grave,
+as he added: "And, because of my love for you, I've lived a life almost
+as clean as your own."
+
+"One's _Fidus Achates_, if I remember anything of my Latin, which
+I don't"--the girl spoke in that voice which the man loved best,
+because it had left off bantering, and become grave with such softness
+and depth of timbre as might have trembled in the reed pipes of a
+Sylvan Pan--"is one's really-truly friend. Everything that you claim
+for yourself is admitted--and many other things that you haven't
+claimed. Now, suppose you give me three minutes to make an accusation
+on other charges. They're not very grave faults, perhaps, by the
+standards of your world and mine, but to me, personally, they seem
+important."
+
+Wilfred nodded, and said, gravely:
+
+"I am waiting."
+
+"In the first place, you are one of those men whose fortunes are
+listed in the top schedule--the swollen fortunes. Socialists would put
+you in the predatory class."
+
+"Drennie," he groaned, "do you keep your heaven locked behind a gate
+of the Needle's Eye? It's not my fault that I'm rich. It was wished on
+me. If you are serious, I'm willing to become poor as Job's turkey.
+Show me the way to strip myself, and I'll stand shortly before you
+begging alms."
+
+"To what end?" she questioned. "Poverty would be quite inconvenient. I
+shouldn't care for it. But hasn't it ever occurred to you that the man
+who wears the strongest and brightest mail, and who by his own
+confession is possessed of an alert brain, ought occasionally to be
+seen in the lists?"
+
+"In short, your charge is that I am a shirker--and, since it's the
+same thing, a coward?"
+
+Adrienne did not at once answer him, but she straightened out for an
+uninterrupted run before the wind, and by the tiny moss-green flecks,
+which moments of great seriousness brought to the depths of her eyes,
+he knew that she meant to speak the unveiled truth.
+
+"Besides your own holdings in a lot of railways and things, you handle
+your mother's and sisters' property, don't you?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"In a fashion, I do. I sign the necessary papers when the lawyers call
+me up, and ask me to come down-town."
+
+"You are a director in the Metropole Trust Company?"
+
+"Guilty."
+
+"In the Consolidated Seacoast?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"In a half-dozen other things equally important?"
+
+"Good Lord, Drennie, how can I answer all those questions off-hand? I
+don't carry a note-book in my yachting flannels."
+
+Her voice was so serious that he wondered if it were not, also, a
+little contemptuous.
+
+"Do you have to consult a note-book to answer those questions?"
+
+"Those directorate jobs are purely honorary," he defended. "If I
+butted in with fool suggestions, they'd quite properly kick me out."
+
+"With your friends, who are also share-holders, you could assume
+control of the _Morning Intelligence_, couldn't you?"
+
+"I guess I could assume control, but what would I do with it?"
+
+"Do you know the reputation of that newspaper?"
+
+"I guess it's all right. It's conservative and newsy. I read it every
+morning when I'm in town. It fits in very nicely between the grapefruit
+and the bacon-and-eggs."
+
+"It is, also, powerful," she added, "and is said to be absolutely
+servile to corporate interests."
+
+"Drennie, you talk like an anarchist. You are rich yourself, you know."
+
+"And, against each of those other concerns, various charges have been
+made."
+
+"Well, what do you want me to do?"
+
+"It's not what I want you to do," she informed him; "it's what I'd
+like to see you want to do."
+
+"Name it! I'll want to do it forthwith."
+
+"I think, when you are one of a handful of the richest men in New
+York; when, for instance, you could dictate the policy of a great
+newspaper, yet know it only as the course that follows your grapefruit,
+you are a shirker and a drone, and are not playing the game." Her hand
+tightened on the tiller. "I think, if I were a man riding on to the
+polo field, I'd either try like the devil to drive the ball down
+between the posts, or I'd come inside, and take off my boots and
+colors. I wouldn't hover in lady-like futility around the edge of the
+scrimmage."
+
+She knew that to Horton, who played polo like a fiend incarnate, the
+figure would be effective, and she whipped out her words with something
+very close to scorn.
+
+"Duck your head!" she commanded shortly. "I'm coming about."
+
+Possibly, she had thrown more of herself into her philippic than she
+had realized. Possibly, some of her emphasis imparted itself to her
+touch on the tiller, and jerked the sloop too violently into a sudden
+puff as it careened. At all events, the boat swung sidewise, trembled
+for an instant like a wounded gull, and then slapped its spread of
+canvas prone upon the water with a vicious report.
+
+"Jump!" yelled the man, and, as he shouted, the girl disappeared over-
+side, perilously near the sheet. He knew the danger of coming up under
+a wet sail, and, diving from the high side, he swam with racing strokes
+toward the point where she had gone down. When Adrienne's head did not
+reappear, his alarm grew, and he plunged under water where the shadow
+of the overturned boat made everything cloudy and obscure to his wide-
+open eyes. He stroked his way back and forth through the purple fog
+that he found down there, until his lungs seemed on the point of
+bursting. Then, he paused at the surface, shaking the water from his
+face, and gazing anxiously about. The dark head was not visible, and
+once more, with a fury of growing terror, he plunged downward, and
+began searching the shadows. This time, he remained until his chest was
+aching with an absolute torture. If she had swallowed water under that
+canvas barrier this attempt would be the last that could avail. Then,
+just as it seemed that he was spending the last fraction of the last
+ounce of endurance, his aching eyes made out a vague shape, also
+swimming, and his hand touched another hand. She was safe, and together
+they came out of the opaqueness into water as translucent as sapphires,
+and rose to the surface.
+
+"Where were you?" she inquired.
+
+"I was looking for you--under the sail," he panted.
+
+Adrienne laughed.
+
+"I'm quite all right," she assured him. "I came up under the boat at
+first, but I got out easily enough, and went back to look for you."
+
+They swam together to the capsized hull, and the girl thrust up one
+strong, slender hand to the stem, while with the other she wiped the
+water from her smiling eyes. The man also laid hold on the support, and
+hung there, filling his cramped lungs. Then, for just an instant, his
+hand closed over hers.
+
+"There's my hand on it, Drennie," he said. "We start back to New York
+to-morrow, don't we? Well, when I get there, I put on overalls, and go
+to work. When I propose next, I'll have something to show."
+
+A motor-boat had seen their plight, and was racing madly to their
+rescue, with a yard-high swirl of water thrown up from its nose and a
+fusillade of explosions trailing in its wake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christmas came to Misery wrapped in a drab mantle of desolation. The
+mountains were like gigantic cones of raw and sticky chocolate, except
+where the snow lay patched upon their cheerless slopes. The skies were
+low and leaden, and across their gray stretches a spirit of squalid
+melancholy rode with the tarnished sun. Windowless cabins, with tight-
+closed doors, became cavernous dens untouched by the cleansing power of
+daylight. In their vitiated atmosphere, their humanity grew stolidly
+sullen. Nowhere was a hint of the season's cheer. The mountains knew
+only of such celebration as snuggling close to the jug of moonshine,
+and drinking out the day. Mountain children, who had never heard of
+Kris Kingle, knew of an ancient tradition that at Christmas midnight
+the cattle in the barns and fields knelt down, as they had knelt around
+the manger, and that along the ragged slopes of the hills the elder
+bushes ceased to rattle dead stalks, and burst into white sprays of
+momentary bloom.
+
+Christmas itself was a week distant, and, at the cabin of the Widow
+Miller, Sally was sitting alone before the logs. She laid down the
+slate and spelling-book, over which her forehead had been strenuously
+puckered, and gazed somewhat mournfully into the blaze. Sally had a
+secret. It was a secret which she based on a faint hope. If Samson
+should come back to Misery, he would come back full of new notions. No
+man had ever yet returned from that outside world unaltered. No man
+ever would. A terrible premonition said he would not come at all, but,
+if he did--if he did--she must know how to read and write. Maybe, when
+she had learned a little more, she might even go to school for a term
+or two. She had not confided her secret. The widow would not have
+understood. The book and slate came out of their dusty cranny in the
+logs beside the fireplace only when the widow had withdrawn to her bed,
+and the freckled boy was dreaming of being old enough to kill Hollmans.
+
+The cramped and distorted chirography on the slate was discouraging.
+It was all proving very hard work. The girl gazed for a time at
+something she saw in the embers, and then a faint smile came to her
+lips. By next Christmas, she would surprise Samson with a letter. It
+should be well written, and every "hain't" should be an "isn't." Of
+course, until then Samson would not write to her, because he would not
+know that she could read the letter--indeed, as yet the deciphering of
+"hand-write" was beyond her abilities.
+
+She rose and replaced the slate and primer. Then, she took tenderly
+from its corner the rifle, which the boy had confided to her keeping,
+and unwrapped its greasy covering. She drew the cartridges from chamber
+and magazine, oiled the rifling, polished the lock, and reloaded the
+piece.
+
+"Thar now," she said, softly, "I reckon ther old rifle-gun's ready."
+
+As she sat there alone in the shuck-bottomed chair, the corners of the
+room wavered in huge shadows, and the smoke-blackened cavern of the
+fireplace, glaring like a volcano pit, threw her face into relief. She
+made a very lovely and pathetic picture. Her slender knees were drawn
+close together, and from her slim waist she bent forward, nursing the
+inanimate thing which she valued and tended, because Samson valued it.
+Her violet eyes held the heart-touching wistfulness of utter
+loneliness, and her lips drooped. This small girl, dreaming her dreams
+of hope against hope, with the vast isolation of the hills about her,
+was a little monument of unflinching loyalty and simple courage, and,
+as she sat, she patted the rifle with as soft a touch as though she had
+been dandling Samson's child--and her own--on her knee. There was no
+speck of rust in the unused muzzle, no hitch in the easily sliding
+mechanism of the breechblock. The hero's weapon was in readiness to his
+hand, as the bow of Ulysses awaited the coming of the wanderer.
+
+Then, with sudden interruption to her reflections, came a rattling on
+the cabin door. She sat up and listened. Night visitors were rare at
+the Widow Miller's. Sally waited, holding her breath, until the sound
+was repeated.
+
+"Who is hit?" she demanded in a low voice.
+
+"Hit's me--Tam'rack!" came the reply, very low and cautious, and
+somewhat shamefaced.
+
+"What does ye want?"
+
+"Let me in, Sally," whined the kinsman, desperately. "They're atter
+me. They won't think to come hyar."
+
+Sally had not seen her cousin since Samson had forbidden his coming to
+the house. Since Samson's departure, the troublesome kinsman, too, had
+been somewhere "down below," holding his railroad job. But the call for
+protection was imperative. She set the gun out of sight against the
+mantle-shelf, and, walking over unwillingly, opened the door.
+
+The mud-spattered man came in, glancing about him half-furtively, and
+went to the fireplace. There, he held his hands to the blaze.
+
+"Hit's cold outdoors," he said.
+
+"What manner of deviltry hev ye been into now, Tam'rack?" inquired the
+girl. "Kain't ye never keep outen trouble?"
+
+The self-confessed refugee did not at once reply. When he did, it was
+to ask:
+
+"Is the widder asleep?"
+
+Sally saw from his blood-shot eyes that he had been drinking heavily.
+She did not resume her seat, but stood holding him with her eyes. In
+them, the man read contempt, and an angry flush mounted to his sallow
+cheek-bones.
+
+"I reckon ye knows," went on the girl in the same steady voice, "thet
+Samson meant what he said when he warned ye ter stay away from hyar. I
+reckon ye knows I wouldn't never hev opened thet door, ef hit wasn't
+fer ye bein' in trouble."
+
+The mountaineer straightened up, his eyes burning with the craftiness
+of drink, and the smoldering of resentment.
+
+"I reckon I knows thet. Thet's why I said they was atter me. I hain't
+in no trouble, Sally. I jest come hyar ter see ye, thet's all."
+
+Now, it was the girl's eyes that flashed anger. With quick steps, she
+reached the door, and threw it open. Her hand trembled as she pointed
+out into the night, and the gusty winter's breath caught and whipped
+her calico skirts about her ankles.
+
+"You kin go!" she ordered, passionately. "Don't ye never cross this
+doorstep ag'in. Begone quick!"
+
+But Tamarack only laughed with easy insolence.
+
+"Sally," he drawled. "Thar's a-goin' ter be a dancin' party Christmas
+night over ter the Forks. I 'lowed I'd like ter hev ye go over thar
+with me."
+
+Her voice was trembling with white-hot indignation.
+
+"Didn't ye hear Samson say ye wasn't never ter speak ter me?"
+
+"Ter hell with Samson!" he ripped out, furiously. "Nobody hain't
+pesterin' 'bout him. I don't allow Samson, ner no other man, ter
+dictate ter me who I keeps company with. I likes ye, Sally. Ye're the
+purtiest gal in the mountings, an'----"
+
+"Will ye git out, or hev I got ter drive ye?" interrupted the girl.
+Her face paled, and her lips drew themselves into a taut line.
+
+"Will ye go ter the party with me, Sally?" He came insolently over,
+and stood waiting, ignoring her dismissal with the ease of braggart
+effrontery. She, in turn, stood rigid, wordless, pointing his way
+across the doorstep. Slowly, the drunken face lost its leering grin.
+The eyes blackened into a truculent and venomous scowl. He stepped
+over, and stood towering above the slight figure, which did not give
+back a step before his advance. With an oath, he caught her savagely in
+his arms, and crushed her to him, while his unshaven, whiskey-soaked
+lips were pressed clingingly against her own indignant ones. Too
+astonished for struggle, the girl felt herself grow faint in his
+loathsome embrace, while to her ears came his panted words:
+
+"I'll show ye. I wants ye, an' I'll git ye."
+
+Adroitly, with a regained power of resistance and a lithe twist, she
+slipped out of his grasp, hammering at his face futilely with her
+clenched fists.
+
+"I--I've got a notion ter kill ye!" she cried, brokenly. "Ef Samson
+was hyar, ye wouldn't dare--" What else she might have said was shut
+off in stormy, breathless gasps of humiliation and anger.
+
+"Well," replied Tamarack, with drawling confidence, "ef Samson was
+hyar, I'd show him, too--damn him! But Samson hain't hyar. He won't
+never be hyar no more." His voice became deeply scornful, as he added:
+"He's done cut an' run. He's down thar below, consortin' with
+furriners, an' he hain't thinkin' nothin' 'bout you. You hain't good
+enough fer Samson, Sally. I tells ye he's done left ye fer all time."
+
+Sally had backed away from the man, until she stood trembling near the
+hearth. As he spoke, Tamarack was slowly and step by step following her
+up. In his eyes glittered the same light that one sees in those of a
+cat which is watching a mouse already caught and crippled.
+
+She half-reeled, and stood leaning against the rough stones of the
+fireplace. Her head was bowed, and her bosom heaving with emotion. She
+felt her knees weakening under her, and feared they would no longer
+support her. But, as her cousin ended, with a laugh, she turned her
+back to the wall, and stood with her downstretched hands groping
+against the logs. Then, she saw the evil glint in Tamarack's blood-shot
+eyes. He took one slow step forward, and held out his arms.
+
+"Will ye come ter me?" he commanded, "or shall I come an' git ye?" The
+girl's fingers at that instant fell against something cooling and
+metallic. It was Samson's rifle.
+
+With a sudden cry of restored confidence and a dangerous up-leaping of
+light in her eyes, she seized and cocked it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The girl stepped forward, and held the weapon finger on trigger, close
+to her cousin's chest.
+
+"Ye lies, Tam'rack," she said, in a very low and steady voice--a voice
+that could not be mistaken, a voice relentlessly resolute and purposeful.
+
+"Ye lies like ye always lies. Yore heart's black an' dirty. Ye're a
+murderer an' a coward. Samson's a-comin' back ter me.... I'm a-goin'
+ter be Samson's wife." The tensity of her earnestness might have told a
+subtler psychologist than Tamarack that she was endeavoring to convince
+herself. "He hain't never run away. He's hyar in this room right now."
+The mountaineer started, and cast an apprehensive glance about him. The
+girl laughed, with a deeply bitter note, then she went on:
+
+"Oh, you can't see him, Tam'rack. Ye mout hunt all night, but wharever
+I be, Samson's thar, too. I hain't nothin' but a part of Samson--an'
+I'm mighty nigh ter killin' ye this minute--he'd do hit, I reckon."
+
+"Come on now, Sally," urged the man, ingratiatingly. He was thoroughly
+cowed, seeking compromise. A fool woman with a gun: every one knew it
+was a dangerous combination, and, except for himself, no South had ever
+been a coward. He knew a certain glitter in their eyes. He knew it was
+apt to presage death, and this girl, trembling in her knees but holding
+that muzzle against his chest so unwaveringly, as steady as granite,
+had it in her pupils. Her voice held an inexorable monotony suggestive
+of tolling bells. She was not the Sally he had known before, but a new
+Sally, acting under a quiet sort of exaltation, capable of anything. He
+knew that, should she shoot him dead there in her house, no man who
+knew them both would blame her. His life depended on strategy. "Come
+on, Sally," he whined, as his face grew ashen. "I didn't aim ter make
+ye mad. I jest lost my head, an' made love ter ye. Hit hain't no sin
+ter kiss a feller's own cousin." He was edging toward the door.
+
+"Stand where ye're at," ordered Sally, in a voice of utter loathing,
+and he halted. "Hit wasn't jest kissin' me--" She broke off, and
+shuddered again. "I said thet Samson was in this here room. Ef ye moves
+twell I tells ye ye kin, ye'll hear him speak ter ye, an' ef he speaks
+ye won't never hear nothin' more. This here is Samson's gun. I reckon
+he'll tell me ter pull the trigger terectly!"
+
+"Fer God's sake, Sally!" implored the braggart. "Fer God's sake, look
+over what I done. I knows ye're Samson's gal. I----"
+
+"Shet up!" she said, quietly; and his voice died instantly.
+
+"Yes, I'm Samson's gal, an' I hain't a-goin' ter kill ye this time,
+Tam'rack, unlessen ye makes me do hit. But, ef ever ye crosses that
+stile out thar ag'in, so help me God, this gun air goin' ter shoot."
+
+Tamarack licked his lips. They had grown dry. He had groveled before a
+girl--but he was to be spared. That was the essential thing.
+
+"I promises," he said, and turned, much sobered, to the door.
+
+Sally stood for a while, listening until she heard the slopping hoof-
+beats of his retreat, then she dropped limply into the shaky shuck-
+bottomed chair, and sat staring straight ahead, with a dazed and almost
+mortal hurt in her eyes. It was a trance-like attitude, and the gesture
+with which she several times wiped her calico sleeve across the lips
+his kisses had defiled, seemed subconscious. At last, she spoke aloud,
+but in a far-away voice, shaking her head miserably.
+
+"I reckon Tam'rack's right," she said. "Samson won't hardly come back.
+Why would he come back?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The normal human mind is a reservoir, which fills at a rate of speed
+regulated by the number and calibre of its feed pipes. Samson's mind
+had long been almost empty, and now from so many sources the waters of
+new things were rushing in upon it that under their pressure it must
+fill fast, or give away.
+
+He was saved from hopeless complications of thought by a sanity which
+was willing to assimilate without too much effort to analyze. That
+belonged to the future. Just now, all was marvelous. What miracles
+around him were wrought out of golden virtue, and what out of brazen
+vice, did not as yet concern him. New worlds are not long new worlds.
+The boy from Misery was presently less bizarre to the eye than many of
+the unkempt bohemians he met in the life of the studios: men who
+quarreled garrulously over the end and aim of Art, which they spelled
+with a capital A--and, for the most part, knew nothing of. He retained,
+except within a small circle of intimates, a silence that passed for
+taciturnity, and a solemnity of visage that was often construed into
+surly egotism.
+
+He still wore his hair long, and, though his conversation gradually
+sloughed off much of its idiom and vulgarism, enough of the mountaineer
+stood out to lend to his personality a savor of the crudely picturesque.
+
+Meanwhile, he drew and read and studied and walked and every day's
+advancement was a forced march. The things that he drew began by
+degrees to resolve themselves into some faint similitude to the things
+from which he drew them. The stick of charcoal no longer insisted on
+leaving in the wake of its stroke smears like soot. It began to be
+governable. But it was the fact that Samson saw things as they were and
+insisted on trying to draw them just as he saw them, which best pleased
+his sponsor. During those initial months, except for his long tramps,
+occupied with thoughts of the hills and the Widow Miller's cabin, his
+life lay between Lescott's studio and the cheap lodgings which he had
+taken near by. Sometimes while he was bending toward his easel there
+would rise before his imagination the dark unshaven countenance of Jim
+Asberry. At such moments, he would lay down the charcoal, and his eyes
+would cloud into implacable hatred. "I hain't fergot ye, Pap," he would
+mutter, with the fervor of a renewed vow. With the speed of a clock's
+minute hand, too gradual to be seen by the eye, yet so fast that it
+soon circles the dial, changes were being wrought in the raw material
+called Samson South. One thing did not change. In every crowd, he found
+himself searching hungrily for the face of Sally, which he knew he
+could not find. Always, there was the unadmitted, yet haunting, sense
+of his own rawness. For life was taking off his rough edges--and there
+were many--and life went about the process in workmanlike fashion, with
+sandpaper. The process was not enjoyable, and, though the man's soul
+was made fitter, it was also rubbed raw. Lescott, tremendously
+interested in his experiment, began to fear that the boy's too great
+somberness of disposition would defeat the very earnestness from which
+it sprang. So, one morning, the landscape-maker went to the telephone,
+and called for the number of a friend whom he rightly believed to be
+the wisest man, and the greatest humorist, in New York. The call
+brought no response, and the painter dried his brushes, and turned up
+Fifth Avenue to an apartment hotel in a cross street, where on a
+certain door he rapped with all the elaborate formula of a secret code.
+Very cautiously, the door opened, and revealed a stout man with a
+humorous, clean-shaven face. On a table lay a scattered sheaf of rough
+and yellow paper, penciled over in a cramped and interlined hand. The
+stout man's thinning hair was rumpled over a perspiring forehead.
+Across the carpet was a worn stretch that bespoke much midnight pacing.
+The signs were those of authorship.
+
+"Why didn't you answer your 'phone?" smiled Lescott, though he knew.
+
+The stout man shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the wall, where
+the disconnected receiver was hanging down. "Necessary precaution
+against creditors," he explained. "I am out--except to you."
+
+"Busy?" interrogated Lescott. "You seem to have a manuscript in the
+making."
+
+"No." The stout man's face clouded with black foreboding. "I shall
+never write another story. I'm played out." He turned, and restively
+paced the worn carpet, pausing at the window for a despondent glance
+across the roofs and chimney pots of the city. Lescott, with the
+privilege of intimacy, filled his pipe from the writer's tobacco jar.
+
+"I want your help. I want you to meet a friend of mine, and take him
+under your wing in a fashion. He needs you."
+
+The stout man's face again clouded. A few years ago, he had been
+peddling his manuscripts with the heart-sickness of unsuccessful middle
+age. To-day, men coupled his name with those of Kipling and De
+Maupassant. One of his antipathies was meeting people who sought to
+lionize him. Lescott read the expression, and, before his host had time
+to object, swept into his recital.
+
+At the end he summarized:
+
+"The artist is much like the setter-pup. If it's in him, it's as
+instinctive as a dog's nose. But to become efficient he must go a-field
+with a steady veteran of his own breed."
+
+"I know!" The great man, who was also the simple man, smiled
+reminiscently. "They tried to teach me to herd sheep when my nose was
+itching for bird country. Bring on your man; I want to know him."
+
+Samson was told nothing of the benevolent conspiracy, but one evening
+shortly later he found himself sitting at a café table with his sponsor
+and a stout man, almost as silent as himself. The stout man responded
+with something like churlish taciturnity to the half-dozen men and
+women who came over with flatteries. But later, when the trio was left
+alone, his face brightened, and he turned to the boy from Misery.
+
+"Does Billy Conrad still keep store at Stagbone?"
+
+Samson started, and his gaze fell in amazement. At the mention of the
+name, he saw a cross-roads store, with rough mules hitched to fence
+palings. It was a picture of home, and here was a man who had been
+there! With glowing eyes, the boy dropped unconsciously back into the
+vernacular of the hills.
+
+"Hev ye been thar, stranger?"
+
+The writer nodded, and sipped his whiskey.
+
+"Not for some years, though," he confessed, as he drifted into
+reminiscence, which to Samson was like water to a parched throat.
+
+When they left the café, the boy felt as though he were taking leave of
+an old and tried friend. By homely methods, this unerring diagnostician
+of the human soul had been reading him, liking him, and making him feel
+a heart-warming sympathy. The man who shrunk from lion-hunters, and who
+could return the churl's answer to the advances of sycophant and
+flatterer, enthusiastically poured out for the ungainly mountain boy all
+the rare quality and bouquet of his seasoned personal charm. It was a
+vintage distilled from experience and humanity. It had met the ancient
+requirement for the mellowing and perfecting of good Madeira, that it
+shall "voyage twice around the world's circumference," and it was a
+thing reserved for his friends.
+
+"It's funny," commented the boy, when he and Lescott were alone, "that
+he's been to Stagbone."
+
+"My dear Samson," Lescott assured him, "if you had spoken of Tucson,
+Arizona, or Caracas or Saskatchewan, it would have been the same. He
+knows them all."
+
+It was not until much later that Samson realized how these two really
+great men had adopted him as their "little brother," that he might have
+their shoulder-touch to march by. And it was without his realization,
+too, that they laid upon him the imprint of their own characters and
+philosophy. One night at Tonelli's table-d'hôte place, the latest
+diners were beginning to drift out into Tenth Street. The faded
+soprano, who had in better days sung before a King, was wearying as she
+reeled out ragtime with a strong Neapolitan accent. Samson had been
+talking to the short-story writer about his ambitions and his hatreds.
+He feared he was drifting away from his destiny--and that he would in
+the end become too softened. The writer leaned across the table, and
+smiled.
+
+"Fighting is all right," he said; "but a man should not be just the
+fighter." He mused a moment in silence, then quoted a scrap of verse:
+
+  "'Test of the man, if his worth be,
+     "'In accord with the ultimate plan,
+  "'That he be not, to his marring,
+     "'Always and utterly man;
+  "'That he bring out of the battle
+     "'Fitter and undefiled,
+  "'To woman the heart of a woman,
+     "'To children the heart of a child.'"
+
+Samson South offered no criticism. He had known life from the stoic's
+view-point. He had heard the seductive call of artistic yearnings. Now,
+it dawned on him in an intensely personal fashion, as it had begun
+already to dawn in theory, that the warrior and the artist may meet on
+common and compatible ground, where the fighting spirit is touched and
+knighted with the gentleness of chivalry. He seemed to be looking from
+a new and higher plane, from which he could see a mellow softness on
+angles that had hitherto been only stern and unrelieved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+"I have come, not to quarrel with you, but to try to dissuade you."
+The Honorable Mr. Wickliffe bit savagely at his cigar, and gave a
+despairing spread to his well-manicured hands. "You stand in danger of
+becoming the most cordially hated man in New York--hated by the most
+powerful combinations in New York."
+
+Wilfred Horton leaned back in a swivel chair, and put his feet up on
+his desk. For a while, he seemed interested in his own silk socks.
+
+"It's very kind of you to warn me," he said, quietly.
+
+The Honorable Mr. Wickliffe rose in exasperation, and paced the floor.
+The smoke from his black cigar went before him in vicious puffs.
+Finally, he stopped, and leaned glaring on the table.
+
+"Your family has always been conservative. When you succeeded to the
+fortune, you showed no symptoms of this mania. In God's name, what has
+changed you?"
+
+"I hope I have grown up," explained the young man, with an unruffled
+smile. "One can't wear swaddling clothes forever, you know."
+
+The attorney for an instant softened his manner as he looked into the
+straight-gazing, unafraid eyes of his client.
+
+"I've known you from your babyhood. I advised your father before you
+were born. You have, by the chance of birth, come into the control of
+great wealth. The world of finance is of delicate balance. Squabbles in
+certain directorates may throw the Street into panic. Suddenly, you
+emerge from decent quiet, and run amuck in the china-shop, bellowing
+and tossing your horns. You make war on those whose interests are your
+own. You seem bent on hari-kari. You have toys enough to amuse you. Why
+couldn't you stay put?"
+
+"They weren't the right things. They were, as you say, toys." The
+smile faded and Horton's chin set itself for a moment, as he added:
+
+"If you don't think I'm going to stay put--watch me."
+
+"Why do you have to make war--to be chronically insurgent?"
+
+"Because"--the young man, who had waked up, spoke slowly--"I am
+reading a certain writing on the wall. The time is not far off when,
+unless we regulate a number of matters from within, we shall be
+regulated from without. Then, instead of giving the financial body a
+little griping in its gold-lined tummy, which is only the salutary
+effect of purging, a surgical operation will be required. It will be
+something like one they performed on the body politic of France not so
+long ago. Old Dr. Guillotine officiated. It was quite a successful
+operation, though the patient failed to rally."
+
+"Take for instance this newspaper war you've inaugurated on the
+police," grumbled the corporation lawyer. "It's less dangerous to the
+public than these financial crusades, but decidedly more so for
+yourself. You are regarded as a dangerous agitator, a marplot! I tell
+you, Wilfred, aside from all other considerations the thing is perilous
+to yourself. You are riding for a fall. These men whom you are whipping
+out of public life will turn on you."
+
+"So I hear. Here's a letter I got this morning--unsigned. That is, I
+thought it was here. Well, no matter. It warns me that I have less than
+three months to live unless I call off my dogs."
+
+The Honorable Mr. Wickliffe's face mirrored alarm.
+
+"Let me have it," he demanded. "You shouldn't treat such matters
+lightly. Men are assassinated in New York. I'll refer it to the police."
+
+Horton laughed.
+
+"That would be in the nature of referring back, wouldn't it? I fancy
+it came from some one not so remote from police sympathy."
+
+"What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I'm going to stay put. If I can convict certain corrupt members of
+the department, I'm going to nail brass-buttoned hides all over the
+front of the city hall."
+
+"Have you had any other threats?"
+
+"No, not exactly, but I've had more touching recognition than that.
+I've been asked to resign from several very good clubs."
+
+The attorney groaned.
+
+"You will be a Pariah. So will your allies."
+
+It is said that the new convert is ever the most extreme fanatic.
+Wilfred Horton had promised to put on his working clothes, and he had
+done it with reckless disregard for consequences. At first, he was
+simply obeying Adrienne's orders; but soon he found himself playing the
+game for the game's sake. Men at the clubs and women whom he took into
+dinner chaffed him over his sudden disposition to try his wings. He was
+a man riding a hobby, they said. In time, it began to dawn that he,
+with others, whom he had drawn to his standards, meant serious war on
+certain complacent evils in the world of finance and politics. Sleeping
+dogs of custom began to stir and growl. Political overlords, assailed
+as unfaithful servants, showed their teeth. From some hidden, but
+unfailing, source terribly sure and direct evidence of guilt was being
+gathered. For Wilfred Horton, who was demanding a day of reckoning and
+spending great sums of money to get it, there was a prospect of things
+doing.
+
+Adrienne Lescott was in Europe. Soon, she would return, and Horton
+meant to show that he had not buried his talent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For eight months Samson's life had run in the steady ascent of gradual
+climbing, but, in the four months from the first of August to the first
+of December, the pace of his existence suddenly quickened. He left off
+drawing from plaster casts, and went into a life class. His shyness
+secretly haunted him. The nudity of the woman posing on the model
+throne, the sense of his own almost as naked ignorance, and the dread
+of the criticism to come, were all keen embarrassments upon him.
+
+In this period, Samson had his first acquaintanceship with women,
+except those he had known from childhood--and his first
+acquaintanceship with the men who were not of his own art world. Of the
+women, he saw several sorts. There were the aproned and frowsy
+students, of uncertain age, who seemed to have no life except that
+which existed under studio skylights. There were, also, a few younger
+girls, who took their art life with less painful solemnity; and, of
+course, the models in the "partially draped" and the "altogether."
+
+Tony Collasso was an Italian illustrator, who lodged and painted in
+studio-apartments in Washington Square, South. He had studied in the
+Julian School and the Beaux Arts, and wore a shock of dark curls, a
+Satanic black mustache, and an expression of Byronic melancholy. The
+melancholy, he explained to Samson, sprang from the necessity of
+commercializing his divine gift. His companions were various, numbering
+among them a group of those pygmy celebrities of whom one has never
+heard until by chance he meets them, and of whom their intimates speak
+as of immortals.
+
+To Collasso's studio, Samson was called one night by telephone. He had
+sometimes gone there before to sit for an hour, chiefly as a listener,
+while the man from Sorrento bewailed fate with his coterie, and
+denounced all forms of government, over insipid Chianti. Sometimes, an
+equally melancholy friend in soiled linen and frayed clothes took up
+his violin, and, as he improvised, the noisy group would fall silent.
+At such moments, Samson would ride out on the waves of melody, and see
+again the velvet softness of the mountain night, with stars hanging
+intimately close, and hear the ripple of Misery and a voice for which
+he longed.
+
+But, to-night, he entered the door to find himself in the midst of a
+gay and boisterous party. The room was already thickly fogged with
+smoke, and a dozen men and women, singing snatches of current airs,
+were interesting themselves over a chafing dish. The studio of Tony
+Collasso was of fair size, and adorned with many unframed paintings,
+chiefly his own, and a few good tapestries and bits of bric-à-brac
+variously jettisoned from the sea of life in which he had drifted. The
+crowd itself was typical. A few very minor writers and artists, a model
+or two, and several women who had thinking parts in current Broadway
+productions.
+
+At eleven o'clock the guests of honor arrived in a taxicab. They were
+Mr. William Farbish and Miss Winifred Starr. Having come, as they
+explained, direct from the theater where Miss Starr danced in the first
+row, they were in evening dress. Samson mentally acknowledged, though,
+with instinctive disfavor for the pair, that both were, in a way,
+handsome. Collasso drew him aside to whisper importantly:
+
+"Make yourself agreeable to Farbish. He is received in the most
+exclusive society, and is a connoisseur of art. He is a connoisseur in
+all things," added the Italian, with a meaning glance at the girl.
+"Farbish has lived everywhere," he ran on, "and, if he takes a fancy to
+you, he will put you up at the best clubs. I think I shall sell him a
+landscape."
+
+The girl was talking rapidly and loudly. She had at once taken the
+center of the room, and her laughter rang in free and egotistical peals
+above the other voices.
+
+"Come," said the host, "I shall present you."
+
+The boy shook hands, gazing with his usual directness into the show
+-girl's large and deeply-penciled eyes. Farbish, standing at one side
+with his hands in his pockets, looked on with an air of slightly bored
+detachment.
+
+His dress, his mannerisms, his bearing, were all those of the man who
+has overstudied his part. They were too perfect, too obviously
+rehearsed through years of social climbing, but that was a defect
+Samson was not yet prepared to recognize.
+
+Some one had naïvely complimented Miss Starr on the leopard-skin cloak
+she had just thrown from her shapely shoulders, and she turned promptly
+and vivaciously to the flatterer.
+
+"It is nice, isn't it?" she prattled. "It may look a little up-stage
+for a girl who hasn't got a line to read in the piece, but these days
+one must get the spot-light, or be a dead one. It reminds me of a
+little run-in I had with Graddy--he's our stage-director, you know."
+She paused, awaiting the invitation to proceed, and, having received
+it, went gaily forward. "I was ten minutes late, one day, for
+rehearsal, and Graddy came up with that sarcastic manner of his, and
+said: 'Miss Starr, I don't doubt you are a perfectly nice girl, and all
+that, but it rather gets my goat to figure out how, on a salary of
+fifteen dollars a week, you come to rehearsals in a million dollars'
+worth of clothes, riding in a limousine--_and_ ten minutes late!'"
+She broke off with the eager little expression of awaiting applause,
+and, having been satisfied, she added: "I was afraid that wasn't going
+to get a laugh, after all."
+
+She glanced inquiringly at Samson, who had not smiled, and who stood
+looking puzzled.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, Mr. South, from down South," she challenged.
+
+"I guess I'm sort of like Mr. Graddy," said the boy, slowly. "I was
+just wondering how you do do it."
+
+He spoke with perfect seriousness, and, after a moment, the girl broke
+into a prolonged peal of laughter.
+
+"Oh, you are delicious!" she exclaimed. "If I could do the
+_ingénue_ like that, believe me, I'd make some hit." She came
+over, and, laying a hand on each of the boy's shoulders, kissed him
+lightly on the cheek. "That's for a droll boy!" she said. "That's the
+best line I've heard pulled lately."
+
+Farbish was smiling in quiet amusement. He tapped the mountaineer on
+the shoulder.
+
+"I've heard George Lescott speak of you," he said, genially. "I've
+rather a fancy for being among the discoverers of men of talent. We
+must see more of each other."
+
+Samson left the party early, and with a sense of disgust. It was, at
+the time of his departure, waxing more furious in its merriment. It
+seemed to him that nowhere among these people was a note of sincerity,
+and his thoughts went back to the parting at the stile, and the girl
+whose artlessness and courage were honest.
+
+Several days later, Samson was alone in Lescott's studio. It was
+nearing twilight, and he had laid aside a volume of De Maupassant,
+whose simple power had beguiled him. The door opened, and he saw the
+figure of a woman on the threshold. The boy rose somewhat shyly from
+his seat, and stood looking at her. She was as richly dressed as Miss
+Starr had been, but there was the same difference as between the colors
+of the sunset sky and the exaggerated daubs of Collasso's landscape.
+She stood lithely straight, and her furs fell back from a throat as
+smooth and slenderly rounded as Sally's. Her cheeks were bright with
+the soft glow of perfect health, and her lips parted over teeth that
+were as sound and strong as they were decorative. This girl did not
+have to speak to give the boy the conviction that she was some one whom
+he must like. She stood at the door a moment, and then came forward
+with her hand outstretched.
+
+"This is Mr. South, isn't it?" she asked, with a frank friendliness in
+her voice.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, that's my name."
+
+"I'm Adrienne Lescott," said the girl. "I thought I'd find my brother
+here. I stopped by to drive him up-town."
+
+Samson had hesitatingly taken the gloved hand, and its grasp was firm
+and strong despite its ridiculous smallness.
+
+"I reckon he'll be back presently." The boy was in doubt as to the
+proper procedure. This was Lescott's studio, and he was not certain
+whether or not it lay in his province to invite Lescott's sister to
+take possession of it. Possibly, he ought to withdraw. His ideas of
+social usages were very vague.
+
+"Then, I think I'll wait," announced the girl. She threw off her fur
+coat, and took a seat before the open grate. The chair was large, and
+swallowed her up.
+
+Samson wanted to look at her, and was afraid that this would be
+impolite. He realized that he had seen no real ladies, except on the
+street, and now he had the opportunity. She was beautiful, and there
+was something about her willowy grace of attitude that made the soft
+and clinging lines of her gown fall about her in charming drapery
+effects. Her small pumps and silk-stockinged ankles as she held them
+out toward the fire made him say to himself:
+
+"I reckon she never went barefoot in her life."
+
+"I'm glad of this chance to meet you, Mr. South," said the girl with a
+smile that found its way to the boy's heart. After all, there was
+sincerity in "foreign" women. "George talks of you so much that I feel
+as if I'd known you all the while. Don't you think I might claim
+friendship with George's friends?"
+
+Samson had no answer. He wished to say something equally cordial, but
+the old instinct against effusiveness tied his tongue.
+
+"I owe right smart to George Lescott," he told her, gravely.
+
+"That's not answering my question," she laughed. "Do you consent to
+being friends with me?"
+
+"Miss--" began the boy. Then, realizing that in New York this form of
+address is hardly complete, he hastened to add: "Miss Lescott, I've
+been here over nine months now, and I'm just beginning to realize what
+a rube I am. I haven't no--" Again, he broke off, and laughed at
+himself. "I mean, I haven't any idea of proper manners, and so I'm, as
+we would say down home, 'plumb skeered' of ladies."
+
+As he accused himself, Samson was looking at her with unblinking
+directness; and she met his glance with eyes that twinkled.
+
+"Mr. South," she said, "I know all about manners, and you know all
+about a hundred real things that I want to know. Suppose we begin
+teaching each other?"
+
+Samson's face lighted with the revolutionizing effect that a smile can
+bring only to features customarily solemn.
+
+"Miss Lescott," he said, "let's call that a trade--but you're gettin'
+all the worst of it. To start with, you might give me a lesson right
+now in how a feller ought to act, when he's talkin' to a lady--how I
+ought to act with you!"
+
+Her laugh made the situation as easy as an old shoe.
+
+Ten minutes later, Lescott entered.
+
+"Well," he said, with a smile, "shall I Introduce you people, or have
+you already done it for yourselves?"
+
+"Oh," Adrienne assured him, "Mr. South and I are old friends." As she
+left the room, she turned and added: "The second lesson had better be at
+my house. If I telephone you some day when we can have the school-room
+to ourselves, will you come up?"
+
+Samson grinned, and forgot to be bashful as he replied:
+
+"I'll come a-kitin'!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Early that year, the touch of autumn came to the air. Often, returning
+at sundown from the afternoon life class, Samson felt the lure of its
+melancholy sweetness, and paused on one of the Washington Square
+benches, with many vague things stirring in his mind. Some of these
+things were as subtly intangible as the lazy sweetness that melted the
+façades of the walls into the soft colors of a dream city. He found
+himself loving the Palisades of Jersey, seen through a powdery glow at
+evening, and the red-gold glare of the setting sun on high-swung gilt
+signs. He felt with a throb of his pulses that he was in the Bagdad of
+the new world, and that every skyscraper was a minaret from which the
+muezzin rang toward the Mecca of his Art. He felt with a stronger throb
+the surety of young, but quickening, abilities within himself. Partly,
+it was the charm of Indian summer, partly a sense of growing with the
+days, but, also, though he had not as yet realized that, it was the new
+friendship into which Adrienne had admitted him, and the new experience
+of frank _camaraderie_ with a woman not as a member of an inferior
+sex, but as an equal companion of brain and soul. He had seen her
+often, and usually alone, because he shunned meetings with strangers.
+Until his education had advanced further, he wished to avoid social
+embarrassments. He knew that she liked him, and realized that it was
+because he was a new and virile type, and for that reason a diversion
+--a sort of human novelty. She liked him, too, because it was rare for a
+man to offer her friendship without making love, and she was certain he
+would not make love. He liked her for the same many reasons that every
+one else did--because she was herself. Of late, too, he had met a
+number of men at Lescott's clubs. He was modestly surprised to find
+that, though his attitude on these occasions was always that of one
+sitting in the background, the men seemed to like him, and, when they
+said, "See you again," at parting, it was with the convincing manner of
+real friendliness. Sometimes, even now, his language was ungrammatical,
+but so, for the matter of that, was theirs.... The great writer smiled
+with his slow, humorous lighting of the eyes as he observed to Lescott:
+
+"We are licking our cub into shape, George, and the best of it is
+that, when he learns to dance ragtime to the organ, he isn't going to
+stop being a bear. He's a grizzly!"
+
+One wonderful afternoon in October, when the distances were mist-hung,
+and the skies very clear, Samson sat across the table from Adrienne
+Lescott at a road-house on the Sound. The sun had set through great
+cloud battalions massed against the west, and the horizon was fading
+into darkness through a haze like ash of roses. She had picked him up
+on the Avenue, and taken him into her car for a short spin, but the
+afternoon had beguiled them, luring them on a little further, and still
+a little further. When they were a score of miles from Manhattan, the
+car had suddenly broken down. It would, the chauffeur told them, be the
+matter of an hour to effect repairs, so the girl, explaining to the boy
+that this event gave the affair the aspect of adventure, turned and led
+the way, on foot, to the nearest road-house.
+
+"We will telephone that we shall be late, and then have dinner," she
+laughed. "And for me to have dinner with you alone, unchaperoned at a
+country inn, is by New York standards delightfully unconventional. It
+borders on wickedness." Then, since their attitude toward each other
+was so friendly and innocent, they both laughed. They had dined under
+the trees of an old manor house, built a century ago, and now converted
+into an inn, and they had enjoyed themselves because it seemed to them
+pleasingly paradoxical that they should find in a place seemingly so
+shabby-genteel a _cuisine_ and service of such excellence. Neither
+of them had ever been there before, and neither of them knew that the
+reputation of this establishment was in its own way wide--and unsavory.
+They had no way of knowing that, because of several thoroughly bruited
+scandals which had had origin here, it was a tabooed spot, except for
+persons who preferred a semi-shady retreat; and they passed over
+without suspicion the palpable surprise of the head waiter when they
+elected to occupy a table on the terrace instead of a _cabinet
+particulier_.
+
+But the repairs did not go as smoothly as the chauffeur had expected,
+and, when he had finished, he was hungry. So, eleven o'clock found them
+still chatting at their table on the lighted lawn. After awhile, they
+fell silent, and Adrienne noticed that her companion's face had become
+deeply, almost painfully set, and that his gaze was tensely focused on
+herself.
+
+"What is it, Mr. South?" she demanded.
+
+The young man began to speak, in a steady, self-accusing voice.
+
+"I was sitting here, looking at you," he said, bluntly. "I was
+thinking how fine you are in every way; how there is as much difference
+in the texture of men and women as there is in the texture of their
+clothes. From that automobile cap you wear to your slippers and
+stockings, you are clad in silk. From your brain to the tone of your
+voice, you are woven of human silk. I've learned lately that silk isn't
+weak, but strong. They make the best balloons of it." He paused and
+laughed, but his face again became sober. "I was thinking, too, of your
+mother. She must be sixty, but she's a young woman. Her face is smooth
+and unwrinkled, and her heart is still in bloom. At that same age,
+George won't be much older than he is now."
+
+The compliment was so obviously not intended as compliment at all that
+the girl flushed with pleasure.
+
+"Then," went on Samson, his face slowly drawing with pain, "I was
+thinking of my own people. My mother was about forty when she died. She
+was an old woman. My father was forty-three. He was an old man. I was
+thinking how they withered under their drudgery--and of the monstrous
+injustice of it all."
+
+Adrienne Lescott nodded. Her eyes were sweetly sympathetic.
+
+"It's the hardship of the conditions," she said, softly. "Those
+conditions will change."
+
+"But that's not all I was thinking," went on the boy.
+
+"I was watching you lift your coffee-cup awhile ago. You did it
+unconsciously, but your movement was dainty and graceful, as though an
+artist had posed you. That takes generations, and, in my imagination, I
+saw my people sitting around an oil-cloth on a kitchen table, pouring
+coffee into their saucers."
+
+  "'There are five and twenty ways
+    "'Of writing tribal lays,'"
+
+quoted the girl, smilingly,
+
+  "'And every single one of them is right.'"
+
+"And a horrible thought came to me," continued Samson. He took out his
+handkerchief, and mopped his forehead, then tossed back the long lock
+that fell over it. "I wondered"--he paused, and then went on with a set
+face--"I wondered if I were growing ashamed of my people."
+
+"If I thought that," said Miss Lescott, quietly, "I wouldn't have much
+use for you. But I know there's no danger."
+
+"If I thought there was," Samson assured her, "I would go back there
+to Misery, and shoot myself to death.... And, yet, the thought came to
+me."
+
+"I'm not afraid of your being a cad," she repeated.
+
+"And yet," he smiled, "I was trying to imagine you among my people.
+What was that rhyme you used to quote to me when you began to teach me
+manners?"
+
+She laughed, and fell into nonsense quotation, as she thrummed lightly
+on the table-cloth with her slim fingers.
+
+  "'The goops they lick their fingers,
+     "'The goops eat with their knives,
+  "'They spill their broth on the table-cloth,
+     "'And lead disgusting lives.'"
+
+"My people do all those things," announced Samson, though he said it
+rather in a manner of challenge than apology, "except spilling their
+broth on the table-cloth.... There are no table-cloths. What would you
+do in such company?"
+
+"I," announced Miss Lescott, promptly, "should also lick my fingers."
+
+Samson laughed, and looked up. A man had come out onto the verandah
+from the inside, and was approaching the table. He was immaculately
+groomed, and came forward with the deference of approaching a throne,
+yet as one accustomed to approaching thrones. His smile was that of
+pleased surprise.
+
+The mountaineer recognized Farbish, and, with a quick hardening of the
+face, he recalled their last meeting. If Farbish should presume to renew
+the acquaintanceship under these circumstances, Samson meant to rise
+from his chair, and strike him in the face. George Lescott's sister
+could not be subjected to such meetings. Yet, it was a tribute to his
+advancement in good manners that he dreaded making a scene in her
+presence, and, as a warning, he met Farbish's pleasant smile with a look
+of blank and studied lack of recognition. The circumstances out of which
+Farbish might weave unpleasant gossip did not occur to Samson. That they
+were together late in the evening, unchaperoned, at a road-house whose
+reputation was socially dubious, was a thing he did not realize. But
+Farbish was keenly alive to the possibilities of the situation. He chose
+to construe the Kentuckian's blank expression as annoyance at being
+discovered, a sentiment he could readily understand. Adrienne Lescott,
+following her companion's eyes, looked up, and to the boy's astonishment
+nodded to the new-comer, and called him by name.
+
+"Mr. Farbish," she laughed, with mock confusion and total innocence of
+the fact that her words might have meaning, "don't tell on us."
+
+"I never tell things, my dear lady," said the newcomer. "I have dwelt
+too long in conservatories to toss pebbles. I'm afraid, Mr. South, you
+have forgotten me. I'm Farbish, and I had the pleasure of meeting you"
+--he paused a moment, then with a pointed glance added--"at the Manhattan
+Club, was it not?"
+
+"It was not," said Samson, promptly. Farbish looked his surprise, but
+was resolved to see no offense, and, after a few moments of affable
+and, it must be acknowledged, witty conversation, withdrew to his own
+table.
+
+"Where did you meet that man?" demanded Samson, fiercely, when he and
+the girl were alone again.
+
+"Oh, at any number of dinners and dances. His sort is tolerated for
+some reason." She paused, then, looking very directly at the
+Kentuckian, inquired, "And where did you meet him?"
+
+"Didn't you hear him say the Manhattan Club?"
+
+"Yes, and I knew that he was lying."
+
+"Yes, he was!" Samson spoke, contemptuously. "Never mind where it was.
+It was a place I got out of when I found out who were there."
+
+The chauffeur came to announce that the car was ready, and they went
+out. Farbish watched them with a smile that had in it a trace of the
+sardonic.
+
+The career of Farbish had been an interesting one in its own peculiar
+and unadmirable fashion. With no advantages of upbringing, he had
+nevertheless so cultivated the niceties of social usage that his one
+flaw was a too great perfection. He was letter-perfect where one to the
+manor born might have slurred some detail.
+
+He was witty, handsome in his saturnine way, and had powerful friends
+in the world of fashion and finance. That he rendered services to his
+plutocratic patrons, other than the repartee of his dinner talk, was a
+thing vaguely hinted in club gossip, and that these services were not
+to his credit had more than once been conjectured.
+
+When Horton had begun his crusade against various abuses, he had cast
+a suspicious eye on all matters through which he could trace the trail
+of William Farbish, and now, when Farbish saw Horton, he eyed him with
+an enigmatical expression, half-quizzical and half-malevolent.
+
+After Adrienne and Samson had disappeared, he rejoined his companion,
+a stout, middle-aged gentleman of florid complexion, whose cheviot
+cutaway and reposeful waistcoat covered a liberal embonpoint. Farbish
+took his cigar from his lips, and studied its ascending smoke through
+lids half-closed and thoughtful.
+
+"Singular," he mused; "very singular!"
+
+"What's singular?" impatiently demanded his companion. "Finish, or
+don't start."
+
+"That mountaineer came up here as George Lescott's protégé," went on
+Farbish, reflectively. "He came fresh from the feud belt, and landed
+promptly in the police court. Now, in less than a year, he's pairing
+off with Adrienne Lescott--who, every one supposed, meant to marry
+Wilfred Horton. This little party to-night is, to put it quite mildly,
+a bit unconventional."
+
+The stout gentleman said nothing, and the other questioned, musingly:
+
+"By the way, Bradburn, has the Kenmore Shooting Club requested Wilfred
+Horton's resignation yet?"
+
+"Not yet. We are going to. He's not congenial, since his hand is
+raised against every man who owns more than two dollars." The speaker
+owned several million times that sum. This meeting at an out-of-the-way
+place had been arranged for the purpose of discussing ways and means of
+curbing Wilfred's crusades.
+
+"Well, don't do it."
+
+"Why the devil shouldn't we? We don't want anarchists in the Kenmore."
+
+After awhile, they sat silent, Farbish smiling over the plot he had
+just devised, and the other man puffing with a puzzled expression at
+his cigar.
+
+"That's all there is to it," summarized Mr. Farbish, succinctly. "If
+we can get these two men, South and Horton, together down there at the
+shooting lodge, under the proper conditions, they'll do the rest
+themselves, I think. I'll take care of South. Now, it's up to you to
+have Horton there at the same time."
+
+"How do you know these two men have not already met--and amicably?"
+demanded Mr. Bradburn.
+
+"I happen to know it, quite by chance. It is my business to know
+things--quite by chance!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Indian summer came again to Misery, flaunting woodland banners of
+crimson and scarlet and orange, but to Sally the season brought only
+heart-achy remembrances of last autumn, when Samson had softened his
+stoicism as the haze had softened the horizon. He had sent her a few
+brief letters--not written, but plainly printed. He selected short
+words--as much like the primer as possible, for no other messages could
+she read. There were times in plenty when he wished to pour out to her
+torrents of feeling, and it was such feeling as would have carried
+comfort to her lonely little heart. He wished to tell frankly of what a
+good friend he had made, and how this friendship made him more able to
+realize that other feeling--his love for Sally. There was in his mind
+no suspicion--as yet--that these two girls might ever stand in conflict
+as to right-of-way. But the letters he wished to write were not the
+sort he cared to have read to the girl by the evangelist-doctor or the
+district-school teacher, and alone she could have made nothing of them.
+However, "I love you" are easy words--and those he always included.
+
+The Widow Miller had been ailing for months, and, though the local
+physician diagnosed the condition as being "right porely," he knew that
+the specter of tuberculosis which stalks through these badly lighted
+and ventilated houses was stretching out its fingers to touch her
+shrunken chest. This had meant that Sally had to forego the evening
+hours of study, because of the weariness that followed the day of
+nursing and household drudgery. Autumn seemed to bring to her mother a
+slight improvement, and Sally could again sometimes steal away with her
+slate and book, to sit alone on the big bowlder, and study. But,
+oftentimes, the print on the page, or the scrawl on the slate, became
+blurred. Nowadays, the tears came weakly to her eyes, and, instead of
+hating herself for them and dashing them fiercely away, as she would
+have done a year ago, she sat listlessly, and gazed across the flaring
+hills.
+
+Even the tuneful glory of the burgundy and scarlet mountains hurt her
+into wincing--for was it not the clarion of Beauty that Samson had
+heard--and in answer to which he had left her? So, she would sit, and
+let her eyes wander, and try to imagine the sort of picture those same
+very hungry eyes would see, could she rip away the curtain of purple
+distance, and look in on him--wherever he was. And, in imagining such a
+picture, she was hampered by no actual knowledge of the world in which
+he lived--it was all a fairy-tale world, one which her imagination
+shaped and colored fantastically. Then, she would take out one of his
+occasional letters, and her face would grow somewhat rapt, as she
+spelled out the familiar, "I love you," which was to her the soul of
+the message. The rest was unimportant. She would not be able to write
+that Christmas. letter. There had been too many interruptions in the
+self-imparted education, but some day she would write. There would
+probably be time enough. It would take even Samson a long while to
+become an artist. He had said so, and the morbid mountain pride forbade
+that she should write at all until she could do it well enough to give
+him a complete surprise. It must be a finished article, that letter--or
+nothing at all!
+
+One day, as she was walking homeward from her lonely trysting place,
+she met the battered-looking man who carried medicines in his
+saddlebags and the Scriptures in his pocket, and who practised both
+forms of healing through the hills. The old man drew down his nag, and
+threw one leg over the pommel.
+
+"Evenin', Sally," he greeted.
+
+"Evenin', Brother Spencer. How air ye?"
+
+"Tol'able, thank ye, Sally." The body-and-soul mender studied the girl
+awhile in silence, and then said bluntly:
+
+"Ye've done broke right smart, in the last year. Anything the matter
+with ye?"
+
+She shook her head, and laughed. It was an effort to laugh merrily,
+but only the ghost of the old instinctive blitheness rippled into it.
+
+"I've jest come from old Spicer South's," volunteered the doctor.
+"He's ailin' pretty consid'able, these days."
+
+"What's the matter with Unc' Spicer?" demanded the girl, in genuine
+anxiety. Every one along Misery called the old man Unc' Spicer.
+
+"I can't jest make out." Her informer spoke slowly, and his brow
+corrugated into something like sullenness. "He hain't jest to say sick.
+Thet is, his organs seems all right, but he don't 'pear to have no
+heart fer nothin', and his victuals don't tempt him none. He's jest
+puny, thet's all."
+
+"I'll go over thar, an' see him," announced the girl. "I'll cook a
+chicken thet'll tempt him."
+
+The physician's mind was working along some line which did not seem to
+partake of cheerfulness. Again, he studied the girl, still upright and
+high-chinned, but, somehow, no longer effervescent with wild, resilient
+strength.
+
+"Hit sometimes 'pears to me," he said, gruffly, "thet this here thing
+of eddication costs a sight more than hit comes to."
+
+"What d'ye mean, Brother Spencer?"
+
+"I reckon if Samson South hadn't a-took this hyar hankerin' atter
+larnin', an' had stayed home 'stid of rainbow chasin', the old man would
+still be able-bodied, 'stid of dyin' of a broken heart--an' you----"
+
+The girl's cheeks flushed. Her violet eyes became deep with a loyal
+and defensive glow.
+
+"Ye mustn't say things like them, Brother Spencer." Her voice was very
+firm and soft. "Unc' Spicer's jest gettin' old, an' es fer me, I wasn't
+never better ner happier in my life." It was a lie, but a splendid lie,
+and she told herself as well as Brother Spencer that she believed it.
+"Samson would come back in a minit ef we sent fer him. He's smart, an'
+he's got a right ter l'arnin'! He hain't like us folks; he's a--" She
+paused, and groped for the word that Lescott had added to her
+vocabulary, which she had half-forgotten. "He's a genius!"
+
+There rose to the lips of the itinerant preacher a sentiment as to how
+much more loyalty availeth a man than genius, but, as he looked at the
+slender and valiant figure standing in the deep dust of the road, he
+left it unuttered.
+
+The girl spent much time after that at the house of old Spicer South,
+and her coming seemed to waken him into a fitful return of spirits. His
+strength, which had been like the strength of an ox, had gone from him,
+and he spent his hours sitting listlessly in a split-bottomed rocker,
+which was moved from place to place, following the sunshine.
+
+"I reckon, Unc' Spicer," suggested the girl, on one of her first
+visits, "I'd better send fer Samson. Mebby hit mout do ye good ter see
+him."
+
+The old man was weakly leaning back in his chair, and his eyes were
+vacantly listless; but, at the suggestion, he straightened, and the
+ancient fire came again to his face.
+
+"Don't ye do hit," he exclaimed, almost fiercely. "I knows ye means
+hit kindly, Sally, but don't ye meddle in my business."
+
+"I--I didn't 'low ter meddle," faltered the girl.
+
+"No, little gal." His voice softened at once into gentleness. "I knows
+ye didn't. I didn't mean ter be short-answered with ye neither, but
+thar's jest one thing I won't 'low nobody ter do--an' thet's ter send
+fer Samson. He knows the road home, an', when he wants ter come, he'll
+find the door open, but we hain't a-goin' ter send atter him."
+
+The girl said nothing, and, after awhile, the old man wait on:
+
+"I wants ye ter understand me, Sally. Hit hain't that I'm mad with
+Samson. God knows, I loves the boy.... I hain't a-blamin' him,
+neither...."
+
+He was silent for awhile, and his words came with the weariness of dead
+hopes when he began again. "Mebby, I oughtn't ter talk about sech things
+with a young gal, but I'm an old man, an' thar hain't no harm in hit....
+From the time when I used ter watch you two children go a-trapsin' off
+in the woods together atter hickory nuts, thar's been jest one thing
+thet I've looked forward to and dreamed about: I wanted ter see ye
+married. I 'lowed--" A mistiness quenched the sternness of his gray
+eyes. "I 'lowed thet, ef I could see yore children playin' round this
+here yard, everything thet's ever gone wrong would be paid fer."
+
+Sally stood silently at his side, and her cheeks flushed as the tears
+crept into her eyes; but her hand stole through the thick mane of hair,
+fast turning from iron-gray to snow-white.
+
+Spicer South watched the fattening hog that rubbed its bristling side
+against the rails stacked outside the fence, and then said, with an
+imperious tone that did not admit of misconstruction:
+
+"But, Sally, the boy's done started out on his own row. He's got ter
+hoe hit. Mebby he'll come back--mebby not! Thet's as the Lord wills.
+Hit wouldn't do us no good fer him to come withouten he come willin'ly.
+The meanest thing ye could do ter me--an' him--would be ter send fer
+him. Ye mustn't do hit. Ye mustn't!"
+
+"All right, Unc' Spicer. I hain't a-goin' ter do hit--leastways, not
+yit. But I'm a-goin' ter come over hyar every day ter see ye."
+
+"Ye can't come too often, Sally, gal," declared the old clansman,
+heartily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wilfred Horton found himself that fall in the position of a man whose
+course lies through rapids, and for the first time in his life his
+pleasures were giving precedence to business. He knew that his
+efficiency would depend on maintaining the physical balance of perfect
+health and fitness, and early each morning he went for his gallop in
+the park. At so early an hour, he had the bridle path for the most part
+to himself. This had its compensations, for, though Wilfred Horton
+continued to smile with his old-time good humor, he acknowledged to
+himself that it was not pleasant to have men who had previously sought
+him out with flatteries avert their faces, and pretend that they had
+not seen him.
+
+Horton was the most-hated and most-admired man in New York, but the
+men who hated and snubbed him were his own sort, and the men who
+admired him were those whom he would never meet, and who knew him only
+through the columns of penny papers. Their sympathy was too remote to
+bring him explicit pleasure. He was merely attempting, from within,
+reforms which the public and the courts had attempted from without.
+But, since he operated from within the walls, he was denounced as a
+Judas. Powerful enemies had ceased to laugh, and begun to conspire. He
+must be silenced! How, was a mooted question. But, in some fashion, he
+must be silenced. Society had not cast him out, but Society had shown
+him in many subtle ways that he was no longer her favorite. He had
+taken a plebeian stand with the masses. Meanwhile, from various
+sources, Horton had received warnings of actual personal danger. But at
+these he had laughed, and no hint of them had reached Adrienne's ears.
+
+One evening, when business had forced the postponement of a dinner
+engagement with Miss Lescott, he begged her over the telephone to ride
+with him the following morning.
+
+"I know you are usually asleep when I'm out and galloping," he
+laughed, "but you pitched me neck and crop into this hurly-burly, and I
+shouldn't have to lose everything. Don't have your horse brought. I
+want you to try out a new one of mine."
+
+"I think," she answered, "that early morning is the best time to ride.
+I'll meet you at seven at the Plaza entrance."
+
+They had turned the upper end of the reservoir before Horton drew his
+mount to a walk, and allowed the reins to hang. They had been galloping
+hard, and conversation had been impracticable.
+
+"I suppose experience should have taught me," began Horton, slowly,
+"that the most asinine thing in the world is to try to lecture you,
+Drennie. But there are times when one must even risk your delight at
+one's discomfiture."
+
+"I'm not going to tease you this morning," she answered, docilely. "I
+like the horse too well--and, to be frank, I like you too well!"
+
+"Thank you," smiled Horton. "As usual, you disarm me on the verge of
+combat. I had nerved myself for ridicule."
+
+"What have I done now?" inquired the girl, with an innocence which
+further disarmed him.
+
+"The Queen can do no wrong. But even the Queen, perhaps more
+particularly the Queen, must give thought to what people are saying."
+
+"What are people saying?"
+
+"The usual unjust things that are said about women in society. You are
+being constantly seen with an uncouth freak who is scarcely a
+gentleman, however much he may be a man. And malicious tongues are
+wagging."
+
+The girl stiffened.
+
+"I won't spar with you. I know that you are alluding to Samson South,
+though the description is a slander. I never thought it would be
+necessary to say such a thing to you, Wilfred, but you are talking like
+a cad."
+
+The young man flushed.
+
+"I laid myself open to that," he said, slowly, "and I suppose I should
+have expected it."
+
+He knew her well enough to dread the calmness of her more serious
+anger, and just now the tilt of her chin, the ominous light of her deep
+eyes and the quality of her voice told him that he had incurred it.
+
+"May I ask," Adrienne inquired, "what you fancy constitutes your right
+to assume this censorship of my conduct?"
+
+"I have no censorship, of course. I have only the interest of loving
+you, and meaning to marry you."
+
+"And I may remark in passing, that you are making no progress to that
+end by slandering my friends."
+
+"Adrienne, I'm not slandering. God knows I hate cads and snobs. Mr.
+South is simply, as yet, uncivilized. Otherwise, he would hardly take
+you, unchaperoned, to--well, let us say to ultra-bohemian resorts,
+where you are seen by such gossip-mongers as William Farbish."
+
+"So, that's the specific charge, is it?"
+
+"Yes, that's the specific charge. Mr. South may be a man of unusual
+talent and strength. But--he has done what no other man has done--with
+you. He has caused club gossip, which may easily be twisted and
+misconstrued."
+
+"Do you fancy that Samson South could have taken me to the Wigwam Road-
+house if I had not cared to go with him?"
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"Certainly not! But the fact that you did care to go with him
+indicates an influence over you which is new. You have not sought the
+bohemian and unconventional phases of life with your other friends."
+
+Adrienne glanced at the athletic figure riding at her side, just now
+rather rigid with restraint and indignation, as though his vertebrae
+were threaded on a ramrod, and her eyes darkened a little.
+
+"Now, let it be thoroughly understood between us, Wilfred," she said
+very quietly, "that if you see any danger in my unconventionalities, I
+don't care to discuss this, or any other matter, with you now or at any
+time." She paused, then added in a more friendly voice: "It would be
+rather a pity for us to quarrel about a thing like this."
+
+The young man was still looking into her eyes, and he read there an
+ultimatum.
+
+"God knows I was not questioning you," he replied, slowly. "There is
+no price under heaven I would not pay for your regard. None the less, I
+repeat that, at the present moment, I can see only two definitions for
+this mountaineer. Either he is a bounder, or else he is so densely
+ignorant and churlish that he is unfit to associate with you."
+
+"I make no apologies for Mr. South," she said, "because none are
+needed. He is a stranger in New York, who knows nothing, and cares
+nothing about the conventionalities. If I chose to waive them, I think
+it was my right and my responsibility."
+
+Horton said nothing, and, in a moment, Adrienne Lescott's manner
+changed. She spoke more gently:
+
+"Wilfred, I'm sorry you choose to take this prejudice against the boy.
+You could have done a great deal to help him. I wanted you to be
+friends."
+
+"Thank you!" His manner was stiff. "I hardly think we'd hit it off
+together."
+
+"I don't think you quite understand," she argued. "Samson South is
+running a clean, creditable race, weighted down with a burdensome
+handicap. As a straight-thinking sportsman, if for no better reason, I
+should fancy you'd be glad to help him. He has the stamina and
+endurance."
+
+"Those," said Horton, who at heart was the fairest and most generous
+of men, "are very admirable qualities. Perhaps, I should be more
+enthusiastic, Drennie, if you were a little less so."
+
+For the first time since the talk had so narrowly skirted a quarrel,
+her eyes twinkled.
+
+"I believe you are jealous!" she announced.
+
+"Of course, I'm jealous," he replied, without evasion. "Possibly, I
+might have saved time in the first place by avowing my jealousy. I
+hasten now to make amends. I'm green-eyed."
+
+She laid her gloved fingers lightly on his bridle hand.
+
+"Don't be," she advised; "I'm not in love with him. If I were, it
+wouldn't matter. He has,
+
+  "'A neater, sweeter maiden,
+  "'In a greener, cleaner land.'
+
+"He's told me all about her."
+
+Horton shook his head, dubiously.
+
+"I wish to the good Lord, he'd go back to her," he said. "This
+Platonic proposition is the doormat over-which two persons walk to
+other things. They end by wiping their feet on the Platonic doormat."
+
+"We'll cross that--that imaginary doormat, when we get to it," laughed
+the girl. "Meantime, you ought to help me with Samson."
+
+"Thank you, no! I won't help educate my successor. And I won't
+abdicate"--his manner of speech grew suddenly tense--"while I can fight
+for my foothold."
+
+"I haven't asked you to abdicate. This boy has been here less than a
+year. He came absolutely raw--"
+
+"And lit all spraddled out in the police court!" Wilfred prompted.
+
+"And, in less than a year, he has made wonderful advancement; such
+advancement as he could not have made but for one thing."
+
+"Which was--that you took him in hand."
+
+"No--which is, that he springs from stock that, despite its hundred
+years of lapse into illiteracy, is good stock. Samson South was a
+gentleman, Wilfred, two hundred years before he was born."
+
+"That," observed her companion, curtly, "was some time ago."
+
+She tossed her head, impatiently.
+
+"Come," she said, "let's gallop."
+
+"No," protested Wilfred, his face becoming penitent. "Just a moment! I
+retract. It is I who am the cad. Please, tell Mr. South just what we
+have both said, and make my apologies if he'll accept them. Of course,
+if you insist, I'll meet him. I suppose I'll have to meet him some day,
+anyhow. But, frankly, Drennie, I hate the man. It will take a Herculean
+effort to be decent to him. Still, if you say so--"
+
+"No, Wilfred," she declined, "if you can't do it willingly, I don't
+want you to do it at all. It doesn't matter in the least. Let's drop
+the subject."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+One afternoon, swinging along Fifth Avenue in his down-town walk,
+Samson met Mr. Farbish, who fell into step with him, and began to make
+conversation.
+
+"By the way, South," he suggested after the commonplaces had been
+disposed of, "you'll pardon my little prevarication the other evening
+about having met you at the Manhattan Club?"
+
+"Why was it necessary?" inquired Samson, with a glance of disquieting
+directness.
+
+"Possibly, it was not necessary, merely politic. Of course," he
+laughed, "every man knows two kinds of women. It's just as well not to
+discuss the nectarines with the orchids, or the orchids with the
+nectarines."
+
+Samson made no response. But Farbish, meeting his eyes, felt as though
+he had been contemptuously rebuked. His own eyes clouded with an
+impulse of resentment. But it passed, as he remembered that his plans
+involved the necessity of winning this boy's confidence. An assumption
+of superior virtue, he thought, came rather illogically from Samson,
+who had brought to the inn a young woman whom he should not have
+exposed to comment. He, himself, could afford to be diplomatic.
+Accordingly, he laughed.
+
+"You mustn't take me too literally, South," he explained. "The life
+here has a tendency to make us cynical in our speech, even though we
+may be quite the reverse in our practices. In point of fact, I fancy we
+were both rather out of our element at Collasso's studio."
+
+At the steps of a Fifth Avenue club, Farbish halted.
+
+"Won't you turn in here," he suggested, "and assuage your thirst?"
+
+Samson declined, and walked on. But when, a day or two later, he
+dropped into the same club with George Lescott, Farbish joined them in
+the grill--without invitation.
+
+"By the way, Lescott," said the interloper, with an easy assurance
+upon which the coolness of his reception had no seeming effect, "it
+won't be long now until ducks are flying south. Will you get off for
+your customary shooting?"
+
+"I'm afraid not." Lescott's voice became more cordial, as a man's will
+whose hobby has been touched. "There are several canvases to be
+finished for approaching exhibitions. I wish I could go. When the first
+cold winds begin to sweep down, I get the fever. The prospects are
+good, too, I understand."
+
+"The best in years! Protection in the Canadian breeding fields is
+bearing fruit. Do you shoot ducks, Mr. South?" The speaker included
+Samson as though merely out of deference to his physical presence.
+
+Samson shook his head. But he was listening eagerly. He, too, knew
+that note of the migratory "honk" from high overhead.
+
+"Samson," said Lescott slowly, as he caught the gleam in his friend's
+eyes, "you've been working too hard. You'll have to take a week off,
+and try your hand. After you've changed your method from rifle to
+shotgun, you'll bag your share, and you'll come back fitter for work. I
+must arrange it."
+
+"As to that," suggested Farbish, in the manner of one regarding the
+civilities, "Mr. South can run down to the Kenmore. I'll have a card
+made out for him."
+
+"Don't trouble," demurred Lescott, coolly, "I can fix that up."
+
+"It would be a pleasure," smiled the other. "I sincerely wish I could
+be there at the same time, but I'm afraid that, like you, Lescott, I
+shall have to give business the right of way. However, when I hear that
+the flights are beginning, I'll call Mr. South up, and pass the news to
+him."
+
+Samson had thought it rather singular that he had never met Horton at
+the Lescott house, though Adrienne spoke of him almost as of a member
+of the family. However, Samson's visits were usually in his intervals
+between relays of work and Horton was probably at such times in Wall
+Street. It did not occur to the mountaineer that the other was
+intentionally avoiding him. He knew of Wilfred only through Adrienne's
+eulogistic descriptions, and, from hearsay, liked him.
+
+The months of close application to easel and books had begun to tell
+on the outdoor man in a softening of muscles and a slight, though
+noticeable, pallor. The enthusiasm with which he attacked his daily
+schedule carried him far, and made his progress phenomenal, but he was
+spending capital of nerve and health, and George Lescott began to fear
+a break-down for his protégé. Lescott did not want to advise a visit to
+the mountains, because he had secured from the boy a promise that,
+unless he was called home, he would give the experiment an unbroken
+trial of eighteen months.
+
+If Samson went back, he feared his return would reawaken the sleeping
+volcano of the feud--and he could not easily come away again. He
+discussed the matter with Adrienne, and the girl began to promote in
+the boy an interest in the duck-shooting trip--an interest which had
+already awakened, despite the rifleman's inherent contempt for shotguns.
+
+"You will be in your blind," she enthusiastically told him, "before
+daybreak, and after a while the wedges will come flying into view,
+cutting the fog in hundreds and dropping into the decoys. You'll love
+it! I wish I were going myself."
+
+"Do you shoot?" he asked, in some surprise.
+
+She nodded, and added modestly;
+
+"But I don't kill many ducks."
+
+"Is there anything you can't do?" he questioned in admiration, then
+demanded, with the touch of homesickness in his voice, "Are there any
+mountains down there?"
+
+"I'm afraid we can't provide any mountains," laughed Adrienne. "Just
+salt marshes--and beyond them, the sea. But there's moonshine--of the
+natural variety--and a tonic in the wind that buffets you."
+
+"I reckon I'd like it, all right," he said, "and I'll bring you back
+some ducks, if I'm lucky."
+
+So, Lescott arranged the outfit, and Samson awaited the news of the
+coming flights.
+
+That same evening, Farbish dropped into the studio, explaining that he
+had been buying a picture at Collasso's, and had taken the opportunity
+to stop by and hand Samson a visitor's card to the Kenmore Club.
+
+He found the ground of interest fallow, and artfully sowed it with
+well-chosen anecdotes calculated to stimulate enthusiasm.
+
+On leaving the studio, he paused to say:
+
+"I'll let you know when conditions are just right." Then, he added, as
+though in afterthought: "And I'll arrange so that you won't run up on
+Wilfred Horton."
+
+"What's the matter with Wilfred Horton?" demanded Samson, a shade
+curtly.
+
+"Nothing at all," replied Farbish, with entire gravity. "Personally, I
+like Horton immensely. I simply thought you might find things more
+congenial when he wasn't among those present."
+
+Samson was puzzled, but he did not fancy hearing from this man's lips
+criticisms upon friends of his friends.
+
+"Well, I reckon," he said, coolly, "I'd like him, too."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the other. "I supposed you knew, or I
+shouldn't have broached the topic."
+
+"Knew what?"
+
+"You must excuse me," demurred the visitor with dignity. "I shouldn't
+have mentioned the subject. I seem to have said too much."
+
+"See here, Mr. Farbish," Samson spoke quietly, but imperatively; "if
+you know any reason why I shouldn't meet Mr. Wilfred Horton, I want you
+to tell me what it is. He is a friend of my friends. You say you've
+said too much. I reckon you've either said too much, or too little."
+
+Then, very insidiously and artistically, seeming all the while
+reluctant and apologetic, the visitor proceeded to plant in Samson's
+mind an exaggerated and untrue picture of Horton's contempt for him and
+of Horton's resentment at the favor shown him by the Lescotts.
+
+Samson heard him out with a face enigmatically set, and his voice was
+soft, as he said simply at the end:
+
+"I'm obliged to you."
+
+Farbish had hoped for more stress of feeling, but, as he walked home,
+he told himself that the sphinx-like features had been a mask, and
+that, when these two met, their coming together held potentially for a
+clash. He was judge enough of character to know that Samson's morbid
+pride would seal his lips as to the interview--until he met Horton.
+
+In point of fact, Samson was at first only deeply wounded. That
+through her kindness to him Adrienne was having to fight his battles
+with a close friend he had never suspected. Then, slowly, a bitterness
+began to rankle, quite distinct from the hurt to his sensitiveness. His
+birthright of suspicion and tendency to foster hatreds had gradually
+been falling asleep under the disarming kindness of these persons. Now,
+they began to stir in him again vaguely, but forcibly, and to trouble
+him.
+
+Samson did not appear at the Lescott house for two weeks after that.
+He had begun to think that, if his going there gave embarrassment to
+the girl who had been kind to him, it were better to remain away.
+
+"I don't belong here," he told himself, bitterly. "I reckon everybody
+that knows me in New York, except the Lescotts, is laughing at me
+behind my back."
+
+He worked fiercely, and threw into his work such fire and energy that
+it came out again converted into a boldness of stroke and an almost
+savage vigor of drawing. The instructor nodded his head over the easel,
+and passed on to the next student without having left the defacing mark
+of his relentless crayon. To the next pupil, he said:
+
+"Watch the way that man South draws. He's not clever. He's elementally
+sincere, and, if he goes on, the first thing you know he will be a
+portrait painter. He won't merely draw eyes and lips and noses, but
+character and virtues and vices showing out through them."
+
+And Samson met every gaze with smoldering savagery, searching for some
+one who might be laughing at him openly, or even covertly; instead of
+behind his back. The long-suffering fighting lust in him craved
+opportunity to break out and relieve the pressure on his soul. But no
+one laughed.
+
+One afternoon late in November, a hint of blizzards swept snarling
+down the Atlantic seaboard from the polar floes, with wet flurries of
+snow and rain. Off on the marshes where the Kenmore Club had its lodge,
+the live decoys stretched their clipped wings, and raised their green
+necks restively into the salt wind, and listened. With dawn, they had
+heard, faint and far away, the first notes of that wild chorus with
+which the skies would ring until the southerly migrations ended--the
+horizon-distant honking of high-flying water fowl.
+
+Then it was that Farbish dropped in with marching orders, and Samson,
+yearning to be away where there were open skies, packed George
+Lescott's borrowed paraphernalia, and prepared to leave that same night.
+
+While he was packing, the telephone rang, and Samson heard Adrienne's
+voice at the other end of the wire.
+
+"Where have you been hiding?" she demanded. "I'll have to send a
+truant officer after you."
+
+"I've been very busy," said the man, "and I reckon, after all, you
+can't civilize a wolf. I'm afraid I've been wasting your time."
+
+Possibly, the miserable tone of the voice told the girl more than the
+words.
+
+"You are having a season with the blue devils," she announced. "You've
+been cooped up too much. This wind ought to bring the ducks, and----"
+
+"I'm leaving to-night," Samson told her.
+
+"It would have been very nice of you to have run up to say good-bye,"
+she reproved. "But I'll forgive you, if you call me up by long
+distance. You will get there early in the morning. To-morrow, I'm going
+to Philadelphia over night. The next night, I shall be at the theater.
+Call me up after the theater, and tell me how you like it."
+
+It was the same old frankness and friendliness of voice, and the same
+old note like the music of a reed instrument. Samson felt so comforted
+and reassured that he laughed through the telephone.
+
+"I've been keeping away from you," he volunteered, "because I've had a
+relapse into savagery, and haven't been fit to talk to you. When I get
+back, I'm coming up to explain. And, in the meantime, I'll telephone."
+
+On the train Samson was surprised to discover that, after all, he had
+Mr. William Farbish for a traveling companion. That gentleman explained
+that he had found an opportunity to play truant from business for a day
+or two, and wished to see Samson comfortably ensconced and introduced.
+
+The first day Farbish and Samson had the place to themselves, but the
+next morning would bring others. Samson's ideas of a millionaires'
+shooting-box had been vague, but he had looked forward to getting into
+the wilds. The marshes were certainly desolate enough, and the pine
+woods through which the buckboard brought them. But, inside the club
+itself, the Kentuckian found himself in such luxurious comfort as he
+could not, in his own mind, reconcile with the idea of "going hunting."
+He would be glad when the cushioned chairs of the raftered lounging-
+room and the tinkle of high-ball ice and gossip were exchanged for the
+salt air and the blinds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+But, when he went out for his initiation, in the raw blackness before
+daybreak, and lay in the blind, with only his guide for a companion, he
+felt far away from artificial luxuries. The first pale streamers of
+dawn soon streaked the east, and the wind charged cuttingly like drawn
+sabers of galloping cavalry. The wooden decoys had been anchored with
+the live ducks swimming among them, and the world began to awake. He
+drew a long breath of contentment, and waited. Then came the trailing
+of gray and blue and green mists, and, following the finger of the
+silent boatman, he made out in the northern sky a slender wedge of
+black dots, against the spreading rosiness of the horizon. Soon after,
+he heard the clear clangor of throats high in the sky, answered by the
+nearer honking of the live decoys, and he felt a throbbing of his
+pulses as he huddled low against the damp bottom of the blind and waited.
+
+The lines and wedges grew until the sky was stippled with them, and
+their strong-throated cries were a strident music. For a time, they
+passed in seeming thousands, growing from scarcely visible dots into
+speeding shapes with slender outstretched necks and bills, pointed like
+reversed compass needles to the south. As yet, they were all flying
+high, ignoring with lordly indifference the clamor of their renegade
+brothers, who shrieked to them through the morning mists to drop down,
+and feed on death.
+
+But, as the day grew older, Samson heard the popping of guns off to
+the side, where other gunners lay in other blinds, and presently a
+drake veered from his line of flight, far off to the right, harkened to
+the voice of temptation, and led his flock circling toward the blind.
+Then, with a whir and drumming of dark-tipped wings, they came down,
+and struck the water, and the boy from Misery rose up, shooting as he
+came. He heard the popping of his guide's gun at his side, and saw the
+dead and crippled birds falling about him, amid the noisy clamor of
+their started flight.
+
+That day, while the mountaineer was out on the flats, the party of men
+at the club had been swelled to a total of six, for in pursuance of the
+carefully arranged plans of Mr. Farbish, Mr. Bradburn had succeeded in
+inducing Wilfred Horton to run down for a day or two of the sport he
+loved. To outward seeming, the trip which the two men had made together
+had been quite casual, and the outgrowth of coincidence; yet, in point
+of fact, not only the drive from Baltimore in Horton's car, but the
+conversation by the way had been in pursuance of a plan, and the result
+was that, when Horton arrived that afternoon, he found his usually even
+temper ruffled by bits of maliciously broached gossip, until his
+resentment against Samson South had been fanned into danger heat. He
+did not know that South also was at the club, and he did not that
+afternoon go out to the blinds, but so far departed from his usual
+custom as to permit himself to sit for hours in the club grill.
+
+And yet, as is often the case in carefully designed affairs, the one
+element that made most powerfully for the success of Farbish's scheme
+was pure accident. The carefully arranged meeting between the two men,
+the adroitly incited passions of each, would still have brought no
+clash, had not Wilfred Horton been affected by the flushing effect of
+alcohol. Since his college days, he had been invariably abstemious.
+To-night marked an exception.
+
+He was rather surprised at the cordiality of the welcome accorded him,
+for, as chance would have it, except for Samson South, whom he had not
+yet seen, all the other sportsmen were men closely allied to the
+political and financial elements upon which he had been making war.
+Still, since they seemed willing to forget for the time that there had
+been a breach, he was equally so. Just now, he was feeling such
+bitterness for the Kentuckian that the foes of a less-personal sort
+seemed unimportant.
+
+In point of fact, Wilfred Horton had spent a very bad day. The final
+straw had broken the back of his usually unruffled temper, when he had
+found in his room on reaching the Kenmore a copy of a certain New York
+weekly paper, and had read a page, which chanced to be lying face up (a
+chance carefully prearranged). It was an item of which Farbish had
+known, in advance of publication, but Wilfred would never have seen
+that sheet, had it not been so carefully brought to his attention.
+There were hints of the strange infatuation which a certain young woman
+seemed to entertain for a partially civilized stranger who had made his
+entrée to New York _via_ the Police Court, and who wore his hair
+long in imitation of a Biblical character of the same name. The supper
+at the Wigwam Inn was mentioned, and the character of the place
+intimated. Horton felt this objectionable innuendo was directly
+traceable to Adrienne's ill-judged friendship for the mountaineer, and
+he bitterly blamed the mountaineer. And, while he had been brooding on
+these matters, a man acting as Farbish's ambassador had dropped into
+his room, since Farbish himself knew that Horton would not listen to
+his confidences. The delegated spokesman warned Wilfred that Samson
+South had spoken pointedly of him, and advised cautious conduct, in a
+fashion calculated to inflame.
+
+Samson, it was falsely alleged, had accused him of saying derogatory
+things in his absence, which he would hardly venture to repeat in his
+presence. In short, it was put up to Horton to announce his opinion
+openly, or eat the crow of cowardice.
+
+That evening, when Samson went to his room, Farbish joined him.
+
+"I've been greatly annoyed to find," he said, seating himself on
+Samson's bed, "that Horton arrived to-day."
+
+"I reckon that's all right," said Samson. "He's a member, isn't he?"
+
+Farbish appeared dubious.
+
+"I don't want to appear in the guise of a prophet of trouble," he
+said, "but you are my guest here, and I must warn you. Horton thinks of
+you as a 'gun-fighter' and a dangerous man. He won't take chances with
+you. If there is a clash, it will be serious. He doesn't often drink,
+but to-day he's doing it, and may be ugly. Avoid an altercation if you
+can, but if it comes--" He broke off and added seriously: "You will
+have to get him, or he will get you. Are you armed?"
+
+The Kentuckian laughed.
+
+"I reckon I don't need to be armed amongst gentlemen."
+
+Farbish drew from his pocket a magazine pistol.
+
+"It won't hurt you to slip that into your clothes," he insisted.
+
+For an instant, the mountaineer stood looking at his host and with
+eyes that bored deep, but whatever was in his mind as he made that
+scrutiny he kept to himself. At last, he took the magazine pistol,
+turned it over in his hand, and put it into his pocket.
+
+"Mr. Farbish," he said, "I've been in places before now where men were
+drinking who had made threats against me. I think you are excited about
+this thing. If anything starts, he will start it."
+
+At the dinner table, Samson South and Wilfred Horton were introduced,
+and acknowledged their introductions with the briefest and most formal
+of nods. During the course of the meal, though seated side by side,
+each ignored the presence of the other. Samson was, perhaps, no more
+silent than usual. Always, he was the listener except when a question
+was put to him direct, but the silence which sat upon Wilfred Horton
+was a departure from his ordinary custom.
+
+He had discovered in his college days that liquor, instead of
+exhilarating him, was an influence under which he grew morose and
+sullen, and that discovery had made him almost a total abstainer.
+To-night, his glass was constantly filled and emptied, and, as he ate,
+he gazed ahead, and thought resentfully of the man at his side.
+
+When the coffee had been brought, and the cigars lighted, and the
+servants had withdrawn, Horton, with the manner of one who had been
+awaiting an opportunity, turned slightly in his chair, and gazed
+insolently at the Kentuckian.
+
+Samson South still seemed entirely unconscious of the other's
+existence, though in reality no detail of the brewing storm had escaped
+him. He was studying the other faces around the table, and what he saw
+in them appeared to occupy him. Wilfred Horton's cheeks were burning
+with a dull flush, and his eyes were narrowing with an unveiled
+dislike. Suddenly, a silence fell on the party, and, as the men sat
+puffing their cigars, Horton turned toward the Kentuckian. For a
+moment, he glared in silence, then with an impetuous exclamation of
+disgust he announced:
+
+"See here, South, I want you to know that if I'd understood you were
+to be here, I wouldn't have come. It has pleased me to express my
+opinion of you to a number of people, and now I mean to express it to
+you in person."
+
+Samson looked around, and his features indicated neither surprise nor
+interest. He caught Farbish's eye at the same instant, and, though the
+plotter said nothing, the glance was subtle and expressive. It seemed
+to prompt and goad him on, as though the man had said:
+
+"You mustn't stand that. Go after him."
+
+"I reckon"--Samson's voice was a pleasant drawl--"it doesn't make any
+particular difference, Mr. Horton."
+
+"Even if what I said didn't happen to be particularly commendatory?"
+inquired Horton, his eyes narrowing.
+
+"So long," replied the Kentuckian, "as what you said was your own
+opinion, I don't reckon it would interest me much."
+
+"In point of fact"---Horton was gazing with steady hostility into
+Samson's eyes--"I prefer to tell you. I have rather generally expressed
+the belief that you are a damned savage, unfit for decent society."
+
+Samson's face grew rigid and a trifle pale. His mouth set itself in a
+straight line, but, as Wilfred Horton came to his feet with the last
+words, the mountaineer remained seated.
+
+"And," went on the New Yorker, flushing with suddenly augmenting
+passion, "what I said I still believe to be true, and repeat in your
+presence. At another time and place, I shall be even more explicit. I
+shall ask you to explain--certain things."
+
+"Mr. Horton," suggested Samson in an ominously quiet voice, "I reckon
+you're a little drunk. If I were you, I'd sit down."
+
+Wilfred's face went from red to white, and his shoulders stiffened. He
+leaned forward, and for the instant no one moved. The tick of a hall
+clock was plainly audible.
+
+"South," he said, his breath coming in labored excitement, "defend
+yourself!"
+
+Samson still sat motionless.
+
+"Against what?" he inquired.
+
+"Against that!" Horton struck the mountain man across the face with
+his open hand. Instantly, there was a commotion of scraping chairs and
+shuffling feet, mingled with a chorus of inarticulate protest. Samson
+had risen, and, for a second, his face had become a thing of
+unspeakable passion. His hand instinctively swept toward his pocket--
+and stopped half-way. He stood by his overturned chair, gazing into the
+eyes of his assailant, with an effort at self-mastery which gave his
+chest and arms the appearance of a man writhing and stiffening under
+electrocution. Then, he forced both hands to his back and gripped them
+there. For a moment, the tableau was held, then the man from the
+mountains began speaking, slowly and in a tone of dead-level monotony.
+Each syllable was portentously distinct and clear clipped.
+
+"Maybe you know why I don't kill you.... Maybe you don't.... I don't
+give a damn whether you do or not.... That's the first blow I've ever
+passed.... I ain't going to hit back.... You need a friend pretty bad
+just now.... For certain reasons, I'm going to be that friend.... Don't
+you see that this thing is a damned frame-up? ... Don't you see that I
+was brought here to murder you?" He turned suddenly to Farbish.
+
+"Why did you insist on my putting that in my pocket"--Samson took out
+the pistol, and threw it down on the table-cloth in front of Wilfred,
+where it struck and shivered a half-filled wine-glass--"and why did you
+warn me that this man meant to kill me, unless I killed him first? I
+was meant to be your catspaw to put Wilfred Horton out of your way. I
+may be a barbarian and a savage, but I can smell a rat--if it's dead
+enough!"
+
+For an instant, there was absolute and hushed calm. Wilfred Horton
+picked up the discarded weapon and looked at it in bewildered
+stupefaction, then slowly his face flamed with distressing mortification.
+
+"Any time you want to fight me"--Samson had turned again to face him,
+and was still talking in his deadly quiet voice--"except to-night, you
+can find me. I've never been hit before without hitting back. That blow
+has got to be paid for--but the man that's really responsible has got
+to pay first. When I fight you, I'll fight for myself, not for a bunch
+of damned murderers.... Just now, I've got other business. That man
+framed this up!" He pointed a lean finger across the table into the
+startled countenance of Mr. Farbish. "He knew! He has been working on
+this job for a month. I'm going to attend to his case now."
+
+As Samson started toward Farbish, the conspirator rose, and, with an
+excellent counterfeit of insulted virtue, pushed back his chair.
+
+"By God," he indignantly exclaimed, "you mustn't try to embroil me in
+your quarrels. You must apologize. You are talking wildly, South."
+
+"Am I?" questioned the Kentuckian, quietly; "I'm going to act wildly
+in a minute."
+
+He halted a short distance from Farbish, and drew from his pocket a
+crumpled scrap of the offending magazine page: the item that had
+offended Horton.
+
+"I may not have good manners, Mister Farbish, but where I come from we
+know how to handle varmints." He dropped his voice and added for the
+plotter's ear only: "Here's a little matter on the side that concerns
+only us. It wouldn't interest these other gentlemen." He opened his
+hand, and added: "Here, _eat_ that!"
+
+Farbish, with a frightened glance at the set face of the man who was
+advancing upon him, leaped back, and drew from his pocket a pistol--it
+was an exact counterpart of the one with which he had supplied Samson.
+
+With a panther-like swiftness, the Kentuckian leaped forward, and
+struck up the weapon, which spat one ineffective bullet into the
+rafters. There was a momentary scuffle of swaying bodies and a crash
+under which the table groaned amid the shattering of glass and china.
+Then, slowly, the conspirator's body bent back at the waist, until its
+shoulders were stretched on the disarranged cloth, and the white face,
+with purple veins swelling on the forehead, stared up between two brown
+hands that gripped its throat.
+
+"Swallow that!" ordered the mountaineer.
+
+For just an instant, the company stood dumfounded, then a strained,
+unnatural voice broke the silence.
+
+"Stop him, he's going to kill the man!"
+
+The odds were four to two, and with a sudden rally to the support of
+their chief plotter, the other conspirators rushed the figure that
+stood throttling his victim. But Samson South was in his element. The
+dammed-up wrath that had been smoldering during these last days was
+having a tempestuous outlet. He had found men who, in a gentlemen's
+club to which he had come as a guest, sought to use him as a catspaw
+and murderer.
+
+They had planned to utilize the characteristics upon which they relied
+in himself. They had thought that, if once angered, he would relapse
+into the feudist, and forget that his surroundings were those of
+gentility and civilization. Very well, he would oblige them, but not as
+a blind dupe. He would be as elementally primitive as they had pictured
+him, but the victims of his savagery should be of his own choosing.
+Before his eyes swam a red mist of wrath. Once before, as a boy, he had
+seen things as through a fog of blood. It was the day when the factions
+met at Hixon, and he had carried the gun of his father for the first
+time into action. The only way his eyes could be cleared of that fiery
+haze was that they should first see men falling.
+
+As they assaulted him, _en masse_, he seized a chair, and swung
+it flail-like about his head. For a few moments, there was a crashing
+of glass and china, and a clatter of furniture and a chaos of struggle.
+At its center, he stood wielding his impromptu weapon, and, when two of
+his assailants had fallen under its sweeping blows, and Farbish stood
+weakly supporting himself against the table and gasping for the breath
+which had been choked out of him, the mountaineer hurled aside his
+chair, and plunged for the sole remaining man. They closed in a clinch.
+The last antagonist was a boxer, and when he saw the Kentuckian advance
+toward him empty-handed, he smiled and accepted the gauge of battle. In
+weight and reach and practice, he knew that he had the advantage, and,
+now that it was man to man, he realized that there was no danger of
+interference from Horton. But Samson knew nothing of boxing. He had
+learned his fighting tactics in the rough-and-tumble school of the
+mountains; the school of "fist and skull," of fighting with hands and
+head and teeth, and as the Easterner squared off he found himself
+caught in a flying tackle and went to the floor locked in an embrace
+that carried down with it chairs and furniture. As he struggled and
+rolled, pitting his gymnasium training against the unaccustomed assault
+of cyclonic fury, he felt the strong fingers of two hands close about
+his throat and lost consciousness.
+
+Samson South rose, and stood for a moment panting in a scene of
+wreckage and disorder. The table was littered with shivered glasses and
+decanters and chinaware. The furniture was scattered and overturned.
+Farbish was weakly leaning to one side in the seat to which he had made
+his way. The men who had gone down under the heavy blows of the chair
+lay quietly where they had fallen.
+
+Wilfred Horton stood waiting. The whole affair had transpired with
+such celerity and speed that he had hardly understood it, and had taken
+no part. But, as he met the gaze of the disordered figure across the
+wreckage of a dinner-table, he realized that now, with the
+preliminaries settled, he who had struck Samson in the face must give
+satisfaction for the blow. Horton was sober, as cold sober as though he
+had jumped into ice-water, and though he was not in the least afraid,
+he was mortified, and, had apology at such a time been possible, would
+have made it. He knew that he had misjudged his man; he saw the
+outlines of the plot as plainly as Samson had seen them, though more
+tardily.
+
+Samson's toe touched the pistol which had dropped from Farbish's hand
+and he contemptuously kicked it to one side. He came back to his place.
+
+"Now, Mr. Horton," he said to the man who stood looking about with a
+dazed expression, "if you're still of the same mind, I can accommodate
+you. You lied when you said I was a savage--though just now it sort of
+looks like I was, and"--he paused, then added--"and I'm ready either to
+fight or shake hands. Either way suits me."
+
+For the moment, Horton did not speak, and Samson slowly went on:
+
+"But, whether we fight or not, you've got to shake hands with me when
+we're finished. You and me ain't going to start a feud. This is the
+first time I've ever refused to let a man be my enemy if he wanted to.
+I've got my own reasons. I'm going to make you shake hands with me
+whether you like it or not, but if you want to fight first it's
+satisfactory. You said awhile ago you would be glad to be more explicit
+with me when we were alone--" He paused and looked about the room.
+"Shall I throw these damned murderers out of here, or will you go into
+another room and talk?"
+
+"Leave them where they are," said Horton, quietly. "We'll go into the
+reading-room. Have you killed any of them?"
+
+"I don't know," said the other, curtly, "and I don't care."
+
+When they were alone, Samson went on:
+
+"I know what you want to ask me about, and I don't mean to answer you.
+You want to question me about Miss Lescott. Whatever she and I have
+done doesn't concern you, I will say this much: if I've been ignorant
+of New York ways, and my ignorance has embarrassed her, I'm sorry.
+
+"I suppose you know that she's too damned good for you--just like she's
+too good for me. But she thinks more of you than she does of me--and
+she's yours. As for me, I have nothing to apologize to you for. Maybe, I
+have something to ask her pardon about, but she hasn't asked it.
+
+"George Lescott brought me up here, and befriended me. Until a year
+ago, I had never known any life except that of the Cumberland
+Mountains. Until I met Miss Lescott, I had never known a woman of your
+world. She was good to me. She saw that in spite of my roughness and
+ignorance I wanted to learn, and she taught me. You chose to
+misunderstand, and dislike me. These men saw that, and believed that,
+if they could make you insult me, they could make me kill you. As to
+your part, they succeeded. I didn't see fit to oblige them, but, now
+that I've settled with them, I'm willing to give you satisfaction. Do
+we fight now, and shake hands afterward, or do we shake hands without
+fighting?"
+
+Horton stood silently studying the mountaineer.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed at last. "And you are the man I undertook to
+criticize!"
+
+"You ain't answered my question," suggested Samson South.
+
+"South, if you are willing to shake hands with me, I shall be
+grateful. I may as well admit that, if you had thrashed me before that
+crowd, you could hardly have succeeded in making me feel smaller. I
+have played into their hands. I have been a damned fool. I have riddled
+my own self-respect--and, if you can afford to accept my apologies and
+my hand, I am offering you both."
+
+"I'm right glad to hear that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told
+you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got to
+go to the telephone."
+
+The booth was in the same room, and, as Horton waited, he recognized
+the number for which Samson was calling. Wilfred's face once more
+flushed with the old prejudice. Could it be that Samson meant to tell
+Adrienne Lescott what had transpired? Was he, after all, the braggart
+who boasted of his fights? And, if not, was it Samson's custom to call
+her up every evening for a good-night message? He turned and went into
+the hall, but, after a few minutes, returned.
+
+"I'm glad you liked the show...." the mountaineer was saying. "No,
+nothing special is happening here--except that the ducks are
+plentiful.... Yes, I like it fine.... Mr. Horton's here. Wait a minute
+--I guess maybe he'd like to talk to you."
+
+The Kentuckian beckoned to Horton, and, as he surrendered the
+receiver, left the room. He was thinking with a smile of the
+unconscious humor with which the girl's voice had just come across the
+wire:
+
+"I knew that, if you two met each other, you would become friends."
+
+"I reckon," said Samson, ruefully, when Horton joined him, "we'd
+better look around, and see how bad those fellows are hurt in there.
+They may need a doctor." And the two went back to find several startled
+servants assisting to their beds the disabled combatants, and the next
+morning their inquiries elicited the information that the gentlemen
+were all "able to be about, but were breakfasting in their rooms."
+
+Such as looked from their windows that morning saw an unexpected
+climax, when the car of Mr. Wilfred Horton drove away from the club
+carrying the man whom they had hoped to see killed, and the man they
+had hoped to see kill him. The two appeared to be in excellent spirits
+and thoroughly congenial, as the car rolled out of sight, and the
+gentlemen who were left behind decided that, in view of the
+circumstances, the "extraordinary spree" of last night had best go
+unadvertised into ancient history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The second year of a new order brings fewer radical changes than the
+first. Samson's work began to forge out of the ranks of the ordinary,
+and to show symptoms of a quality which would some day give it
+distinction. Heretofore, his instructors had held him rigidly to the
+limitations of black and white, but now they took off the bonds, and
+permitted him the colorful delight of attempting to express himself
+from the palette. It was like permitting a natural poet to leave prose,
+and play with prosody.
+
+Sometimes, when his thoughts went back to the life he had left, it
+seemed immensely far away, as though it were really the life of another
+incarnation, and old ideas that had seemed axiomatic to his boyhood
+stood before him in the guise of strangers: strangers tattered and
+vagabond. He wondered if, after all, the new gods were sapping his
+loyalty. At such times, he would for days keep morosely to himself,
+picturing the death-bed of his father, and seeming to hear a small
+boy's voice making a promise. Sometimes, that promise seemed monstrous,
+in the light of his later experience. But it was a promise--and no man
+can rise in his own esteem by treading on his vows. In these somber
+moods, there would appear at the edges of his drawing-paper terrible,
+vividly graphic little heads, not drawn from any present model. They
+were sketched in a few ferociously powerful strokes, and always showed
+the same malevolent visage--a face black with murder and hate-endowed,
+the countenance of Jim Asberry. Sometimes would come a wild, heart-
+tearing longing for the old places. He wanted to hear the frogs boom,
+and to see the moon spill a shower of silver over the ragged shoulder
+of the mountain. He wanted to cross a certain stile, and set out for a
+certain cabin where a certain girl would be. He told himself that he
+was still loyal, that above all else he loved his people. When he saw
+these women, whose youth and beauty lasted long into life, whose
+manners and clothes spoke of ease and wealth and refinement, he saw
+Sally again as he had left her, hugging his "rifle-gun" to her breast,
+and he felt that the only thing he wanted utterly was to take her in
+his arms. Yes, he would return to Sally, and to his people--some day.
+The some day he did not fix. He told himself that the hills were only
+thirty hours away, and therefore he could go any time--which is the
+other name for no time. He had promised Lescott to remain here for
+eighteen months, and, when that interval ended, he seemed just on the
+verge of grasping his work properly. He assured himself often and
+solemnly that his creed was unchanged; his loyalty untainted; and the
+fact that it was necessary to tell himself proved that he was being
+weaned from his traditions. And so, though he often longed for home, he
+did not return. And then reason would rise up and confound him. Could
+he paint pictures in the mountains? If he did, what would he do with
+them? If he went back to that hermit life, would he not vindicate his
+uncle's prophecy that he had merely unplaced himself? And, if he went
+back and discharged his promise, and then returned again to the new
+fascination, could he bring Sally with him into this life--Sally, whom
+he had scornfully told that a "gal didn't need no l'arnin'?" And the
+answer to all these questions was only that there was no answer.
+
+One day, Adrienne looked up from a sheaf of his very creditable
+landscape studies to inquire suddenly:
+
+"Samson, are you a rich man, or a poor one?"
+
+He laughed. "So rich," he told her, "that unless I can turn some of
+this stuff into money within a year or two, I shall have to go back to
+hoeing corn."
+
+She nodded gravely.
+
+"Hasn't it occurred to you," she demanded, "that in a way you are
+wasting your gifts? They were talking about you the other evening
+--several painters. They all said that you should be doing portraits."
+
+The Kentuckian smiled. His masters had been telling him the same
+thing. He had fallen in love with art through the appeal of the skies
+and hills. He had followed its call at the proselyting of George
+Lescott, who painted only landscape. Portraiture seemed a less-artistic
+form of expression. He said so.
+
+"That may all be very true," she conceded, "but you can go on with
+your landscapes, and let your portraits pay the way. With your entrée,
+you could soon have a very enviable _clientèle_."
+
+  "'So she showed me the way, to promotion and pay,
+  And I learned about women from her,'"
+
+quoted Samson with a laugh.
+
+"And," she added, "since I am very vain and moderately rich, I hereby
+commission you to paint me, just as soon as you learn how."
+
+Farbish had simply dropped out. Bit by bit, the truth of the
+conspiracy had leaked, and he knew that his usefulness was ended, and
+that well-lined pocketbooks would no longer open to his profligate
+demands. The bravo and plotter whose measure has been taken is a broken
+reed. Farbish made no farewells. He had come from nowhere and his going
+was like his coming.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sally had started to school. She had not announced that she meant to
+do so, but each day the people of Misery saw her old sorrel mare making
+its way to and from the general direction of Stagbone College, and they
+smiled. No one knew how Sally's cheeks flamed as she sat alone on
+Saturdays and Sundays on the rock at the backbone's rift. She was
+taking her place, morbidly sensitive and a woman of eighteen, among
+little spindle-shanked girls in short skirts, and the little girls were
+more advanced than she. But she, too, meant to have "l'arnin'"--as much
+of it as was necessary to satisfy the lover who might never come. It
+must be admitted that learning for its own sake did not make a clarion-
+tongued appeal to the girl's soul. Had Samson been satisfied with her
+untutored, she would have been content to remain untutored. He had said
+that these things were of no importance in her, but that was before he
+had gone forth into the world. If, she naïvely told herself, he should
+come back of that same opinion, she would never "let on" that she had
+learned things. She would toss overboard her acquirements as ruthlessly
+as useless ballast from an over-encumbered boat. But, if Samson came
+demanding these attainments, he must find her possessed of them. So
+far, her idea of "l'arnin'" embraced the three R's only. And, yet, the
+"fotched-on" teachers at the "college" thought her the most voraciously
+ambitious pupil they had ever had, so unflaggingly did she toil, and
+the most remarkably acquisitive, so fast did she learn. But her studies
+had again been interrupted, and Miss Grover, her teacher, riding over
+one day to find out why her prize scholar had deserted, met in the road
+an empty "jolt-wagon," followed by a ragged cortège of mounted men and
+women, whose faces were still lugubrious with the effort of recent
+mourning. Her questions elicited the information that they were
+returning from the "buryin'" of the Widow Miller.
+
+Sally was not in the procession, and the teacher, riding on, found her
+lying face down among the briars of the desolate meeting-house yard,
+her small body convulsively heaving with her weeping, and her slim
+fingers grasping the thorny briar shoots as though she would still hold
+to the earth that lay in freshly broken clods over her mother's grave.
+
+Miss Grover lifted her gently, and at first the girl only stared at
+her out of wide, unseeing eyes.
+
+"You've nothing to keep you here now," said the older woman, gently.
+"You can come to us, and live at the college." She had learned from
+Sally's lips that she lived alone with her mother and younger brother.
+"You can't go on living there now."
+
+But the girl drew away, and shook her head with a wild torrent of
+childish dissent.
+
+"No, I kain't, neither!" she declared, violently. "I kain't!"
+
+"Why, dear?" The teacher took the palpitating little figure in her
+arms and kissed the wet face. She had learned something of this sweet
+wood-thrush girl, and had seen both sides of life's coin enough to be
+able to close her eyes and ears, and visualize the woman that this
+might be.
+
+"'Cause I kain't!" was the obstinate reply.
+
+Being wise, Miss Grover desisted from urging, and went with Sally to
+the desolated cabin, which she straightway began to overhaul and put to
+rights. The widow had been dying for a week. It was when she lifted
+Samson's gun with the purpose of sweeping the corner that the girl
+swooped down on her, and rescued the weapon from her grasp.
+
+"Nobody but me mustn't tech thet rifle-gun," she exclaimed, and then,
+little by little, it came out that the reason Sally could not leave
+this cabin, was because some time there might be a whippoorwill call
+out by the stile, and, when it came, she must be there to answer. And,
+when at the next vacation Miss Grover rode over, and announced that she
+meant to visit Sally for a month or two, and when under her deft hands
+the cabin began to transform itself, and the girl to transform herself,
+she discovered that Sally found in the graveyard another magnet. There,
+she seemed to share something with Samson where their dead lay buried.
+While the "fotched-on" lady taught the girl, the girl taught the
+"fotched-on" lady, for the birds were her brothers, and the flowers her
+cousins, and in the poetry that existed before forms of meter came into
+being she was deeply versed.
+
+Toward the end of that year, Samson undertook his portrait of Adrienne
+Lescott. The work was nearing completion, but it had been agreed that
+the girl herself was not to have a peep at the canvas until the painter
+was ready to unveil it in a finished condition. Often as she posed,
+Wilfred Horton idled in the studio with them, and often George Lescott
+came to criticize, and left without criticizing. The girl was impatient
+for the day when she, too, was to see the picture, concerning which the
+three men maintained so profound a secrecy. She knew that Samson was a
+painter who analyzed with his brush, and that his picture would show
+her not only features and expression, but the man's estimate of herself.
+
+"Do you know," he said one day, coming out from behind his easel and
+studying her, through half-closed eyes, "I never really began to know
+you until now? Analyzing you--studying you in this fashion, not by your
+words, but by your expression, your pose, the very unconscious essence
+of your personality--these things are illuminating."
+
+"Can I smile," she queried obediently, "or do I have to keep my face
+straight?"
+
+"You may smile for two minutes," he generously conceded, "and I'm
+going to come over and sit on the floor at your feet, and watch you do
+it."
+
+"And under the X-ray scrutiny of this profound analysis," she laughed,
+"do you like me?"
+
+"Wait and see," was his non-committal rejoinder.
+
+For a few moments, neither of them spoke. He sat there gazing up, and
+she gazing down. Though neither of them said it, both were thinking of
+the changes that had taken place since, in this same room, they had
+first met. The man knew that many of the changes in himself were due to
+her, and she began to wonder vaguely if he had not also been
+responsible for certain differences in her.
+
+He felt for her, besides a deep friendship--such a deep friendship
+that it might perhaps be even more--a measureless gratitude. She had
+been loyal, and had turned and shaped with her deft hand and brain the
+rough clay of his crude personality into something that was beginning
+to show finish and design. Perhaps, she liked him the better because of
+certain obstinate qualities which, even to her persuasive influence,
+remained unaltered. But, if she liked him the better for these things,
+she yet felt that her dominion over him was not complete.
+
+Now, as they sat there alone in the studio, a shaft of sunlight from
+the skylight fell on his squarely blocked chin, and he tossed his head,
+throwing back the long lock from his forehead. It was as though he was
+emphasizing with that characteristic gesture one of the things in which
+he had not yielded to her modeling. The long hair still fell low around
+his head. Just now, he was roughly dressed and paint-stained, but
+usually he presented the inconspicuous appearance of the well-groomed
+man--except for that long hair. It was not so much as a matter of
+personal appearance but as a reminder of the old roughness that she
+resented this. She had often suggested a visit to the barber, but to no
+avail.
+
+"Although I am not painting you," she said with a smile, "I have been
+studying you, too. As you stand there before your canvas, your own
+personality is revealed--and I have not been entirely unobservant
+myself."
+
+"'And under the X-ray scrutiny of this profound analysis,'" he quoted
+with a laugh, "do you like me?"
+
+"Wait and see," she retorted.
+
+"At all events"--he spoke gravely--"you must try to like me a little,
+because I am not what I was. The person that I am is largely the
+creature of your own fashioning. Of course, you had very raw material
+to work with, and you can't make a silk purse of"--he broke off and
+smiled--"well, of me, but in time you may at least get me mercerized a
+little."
+
+For no visible reason, she flushed, and her next question came a
+trifle eagerly:
+
+"Do you mean that I have influenced you?"
+
+"Influenced me, Drennie?" he repeated. "You have done more than that.
+You have painted me out, and painted me over."
+
+She shook her head, and in her eyes danced a light of subtle coquetry.
+
+"There are things I have tried to do, and failed," she told him.
+
+His eyes showed surprise.
+
+"Perhaps," he apologized, "I am dense, and you may have to tell me
+bluntly what I am to do. But you know that you have only to tell me."
+
+For a moment, she said nothing, then she shook her head again.
+
+"Issue your orders," he insisted. "I am waiting to obey."
+
+She hesitated again, then said, slowly:
+
+"Have your hair cut. It's the one uncivilized thing about you."
+
+For an instant, Samson's face hardened.
+
+"No," he said; "I don't care to do that."
+
+"Oh, very well!" she laughed, lightly. "In that event, of course, you
+shouldn't do it." But her smile faded, and after a moment he explained:
+
+"You see, it wouldn't do."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that I've got to keep something as it was to remind me of a
+prior claim on my life."
+
+For an instant the girl's face clouded, and grew deeply troubled.
+
+"You don't mean," she asked, with an outburst of interest more vehement
+than she had meant to show, or realized that she was showing--"you don't
+mean that you still adhere to ideas of the vendetta?" Then she broke off
+with a laugh, a rather nervous laugh. "Of course not," she answered
+herself. "That would be too absurd!"
+
+"Would it?" asked Samson, simply. He glanced at his watch. "Two
+minutes up," he announced. "The model will please resume the pose. By
+the way, may I drive with you to-morrow afternoon?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next afternoon, Samson ran up the street steps of the Lescott
+house, and rang the bell, and a few moments later Adrienne appeared.
+The car was waiting outside, and, as the girl came down the stairs in
+motor coat and veil, she paused and her fingers on the bannisters
+tightened in surprise as she looked at the man who stood below holding
+his hat in his hand, with his face upturned. The well-shaped head was
+no longer marred by the mane which it had formerly worn, but was close
+cropped, and under the transforming influence of the change the
+forehead seemed bolder and higher, and to her thinking the strength of
+the purposeful features was enhanced, and yet, had she known it, the
+man felt that he had for the first time surrendered a point which meant
+an abandonment of something akin to principle.
+
+She said nothing, but as she took his hand in greeting, her fingers
+pressed his own in handclasp more lingering than usual.
+
+Late that evening, when Samson returned to the studio, he found a
+missive in his letter-box, and, as he took it out, his eyes fell on the
+postmark. It was dated from Hixon, Kentucky, and, as the man slowly
+climbed the stairs, he turned the envelope over in his hand with a
+strange sense of misgiving and premonition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+The letter was written in the cramped hand of Brother Spencer. Through
+its faulty diction ran a plainly discernible undernote of disapproval
+for Samson, though there was no word of reproof or criticism. It was
+plain that it was sent as a matter of courtesy to one who, having
+proven an apostate, scarcely merited such consideration. It informed
+him that old Spicer South had been "mighty porely," but was now better,
+barring the breaking of age. Every one was "tolerable." Then came the
+announcement which the letter had been written to convey.
+
+The term of the South-Hollman truce had ended, and it had been renewed
+for an indefinite period.
+
+"Some of your folks thought they ought to let you know because they
+promised to give you a say," wrote the informant. "But they decided
+that it couldn't hardly make no difference to you, since you have left
+the mountains, and if you cared anything about it, you knew the time,
+and could of been here. Hoping this finds you well."
+
+Samson's face clouded. He threw the soiled and scribbled missive down
+on the table and sat with unseeing eyes fixed on the studio wall. So,
+they had cast him out of their councils! They already thought of him as
+one who had been.
+
+In that passionate rush of feeling, everything that had happened since
+he had left Misery seemed artificial and dream-like. He longed for the
+realities that were forfeited. He wanted to press himself close to the
+great, gray shoulders of rock that broke through the greenery like
+giants tearing off soft raiment. Those were his people back there. He
+should be running with the wolf-pack, not coursing with beagles.
+
+He had been telling himself that he was loyal, and now he realized
+that he was drifting like the lotus-eaters. Things that had gripped his
+soul were becoming myths. Nothing in his life was honest--he had become
+as they had prophesied, a derelict. In that thorn-choked graveyard lay
+the crude man whose knotted hand had rested on his head just before
+death stiffened it bestowing a mission.
+
+"I hain't fergot ye, Pap." The words rang in his ears with the agony
+of a repudiated vow.
+
+He rose and paced the floor, with teeth and hands clenched, and the
+sweat standing out on his forehead. His advisers had of late been
+urging him to go to Paris He had refused, and his unconfessed reason
+had been that in Paris he could not answer a sudden call. He would go
+back to them now, and compel them to admit his leadership.
+
+Then, his eyes fell on the unfinished portrait of Adrienne. The face
+gazed at him with its grave sweetness; its fragrant subtlety and its
+fine-grained delicacy. Her pictured lips were silently arguing for the
+life he had found among strangers, and her victory would have been an
+easy one, but for the fact that just now his conscience seemed to be on
+the other side. Samson's civilization was two years old--a thin veneer
+over a century of feudalism--and now the century was thundering its
+call of blood bondage. But, as the man struggled over the dilemma, the
+pendulum swung back. The hundred years had left, also, a heritage of
+quickness and bitterness to resent injury and injustice. His own people
+had cast him out. They had branded him as the deserter; they felt no
+need of him or his counsel. Very well, let them have it so. His problem
+had been settled for him. His Gordian knot was cut.
+
+Sally and his uncle alone had his address. This letter, casting him
+out, must have been authorized by them, Brother Spencer acting merely
+as amanuensis. They, too, had repudiated him--and, if that were true,
+except for the graves of his parents the hills had no tie to hold him.
+
+"Sally, Sally!" he groaned, dropping his face on his crossed arms,
+while his shoulders heaved in an agony of heart-break, and his words
+came in the old crude syllables: "I 'lowed you'd believe in me ef hell
+froze!" He rose after that, and made a fierce gesture with his clenched
+fists. "All right," he said, bitterly, "I'm shet of the lot of ye. I'm
+done!"
+
+But it was easier to say the words of repudiation than to cut the ties
+that were knotted about his heart. Again, he saw Sally standing by the
+old stile in the starlight with sweet, loyal eyes lifted to his own,
+and again he heard her vow that, if he came back, she would be waiting.
+Now, that picture lay beyond a sea which he could not recross. Sally
+and his uncle had authorized his excommunication. There was, after all,
+in the entire world no faith which could stand unalterable, and in all
+the world no reward that could be a better thing than Dead-Sea fruit,
+without the love of that barefooted girl back there in the log cabin,
+whose sweet tongue could not fashion phrases except in illiteracy. He
+would have gambled his soul on her steadfastness without fear--and he
+bitterly told himself he would have lost. And yet--some voice sounded
+to him as he stood there alone in the studio with the arteries knotted
+on his temples and the blood running cold and bitter in his veins--and
+yet what right had he, the deserter, to demand faith? One hand went up
+and clasped his forehead--and the hand fell on the head that had been
+shorn because a foreign woman had asked it. What tradition had he kept
+inviolate? And, in his mood, that small matter of shortened hair meant
+as great and bitter surrender as it had meant to the Samson before him,
+whose mighty strength had gone out under the snipping of shears. What
+course was open to him now, except that of following the precedent of
+the other Samson, of pulling down the whole temple of his past? He was
+disowned, and could not return. He would go ahead with the other life,
+though at the moment he hated it.
+
+With a rankling soul, the mountaineer left New York. He wrote Sally a
+brief note, telling her that he was going to cross the ocean, but his
+hurt pride forbade his pleading for her confidence, or adding, "I love
+you." He plunged into the art life of the "other side of the Seine,"
+and worked voraciously. He was trying to learn much--and to forget much.
+
+One sunny afternoon, when Samson had been in the _Quartier Latin_
+for eight or nine months, the _concièrge_ of his lodgings handed
+him, as he passed through the cour, an envelope addressed in the hand
+of Adrienne Lescott. He thrust it into his pocket for a later reading
+and hurried on to the _atelier_ where he was to have a criticism
+that day. When the day's work was over, he was leaning on the
+embankment wall at the _Quai de Grand St. Augustin_, gazing idly
+at the fruit and flower stands that patched the pavement with color and
+at the gray walls of the Louvre across the Seine, His hand went into
+his pocket, and came out with the note. As he read it, he felt a glow
+of pleasurable surprise, and, wheeling, he retraced his steps briskly
+to his lodgings, where he began to pack. Adrienne had written that she
+and her mother and Wilfred Horton were sailing for Naples, and
+commanded him, unless he were too busy, to meet their steamer. Within
+two hours, he was bound for Lucerne to cross the Italian frontier by
+the slate-blue waters of Lake Maggiore.
+
+A few weeks later Samson and Adrienne were standing together by
+moonlight in the ruins of the Coliseum. The junketing about Italy had
+been charming, and now, in that circle of sepia softness and broken
+columns, he looked at her, and suddenly asked himself:
+
+"Just what does she mean to you?"
+
+If he had never asked himself that question before, he knew now that
+it must some day be answered. Friendship had been a good and seemingly
+a sufficient definition. Now, he was not so sure that it could remain so.
+
+Then, his thoughts went back to a cabin in the hills and a girl in
+calico. He heard a voice like the voice of a song-bird saying through
+tears:
+
+"I couldn't live without ye, Samson.... I jest couldn't do hit!"
+
+For a moment, he was sick of his life. It seemed that there stood
+before him, in that place of historic wraiths and memories, a girl, her
+eyes sad, but loyal and without reproof. For an instant, he could see a
+scene of centuries ago. A barbarian and captive girl stood in the
+arena, looking up with ignorant, but unflinching, eyes; and a man sat
+in the marble tiers looking down. The benches were draped with
+embroidered rugs and gold and scarlet hangings; the air was heavy with
+incense--and blood. About him sat men and women of Rome's culture,
+freshly perfumed from the baths. The slender figure in the dust of the
+circus alone was a creature without artifice. And, as she looked up,
+she recognized the man in the box, the man who had once been a
+barbarian, too, and she turned her eyes to the iron gates of the cages
+whence came the roar of the beasts, and waited the ordeal. And the face
+was the face of Sally.
+
+"You look," said Adrienne, studying his countenance in the pallor of
+the moonlight, "as though you were seeing ghosts."
+
+"I am," said Samson. "Let's go."
+
+Adrienne had not yet seen her portrait. Samson had needed a few hours
+of finishing when he left New York, though it was work which could be
+done away from the model. So, it was natural that, when the party
+reached Paris, Adrienne should soon insist on crossing the _Pont d'
+Alexandre III_. to his studio near the "_Boule Mich'_" for an
+inspection of her commissioned canvas. For a while, she wandered about
+the business-like place, littered with the gear of the painter's craft.
+It was, in a way, a form of mind-reading, for Samson's brush was the
+tongue of his soul.
+
+The girl's eyes grew thoughtful, as she saw that he still drew the
+leering, saturnine face of Jim Asberry. He had not outgrown hate, then?
+But she said nothing, until he brought out and set on an easel her own
+portrait. For a moment, she gasped with sheer delight for the colorful
+mastery of the technique, and she would have been hard to please had she
+not been delighted with the conception of herself mirrored in the
+canvas. It was a face through which the soul showed, and the soul was
+strong and flawless. The girl's personality radiated from the canvas
+--and yet--A disappointed little look crossed and clouded her eyes. She
+was conscious of an indefinable catch of pain at her heart.
+
+Samson stepped forward, and his waiting eyes, too, were disappointed.
+
+"You don't like it, Drennie?" he anxiously questioned. But she smiled
+in answer, and declared:
+
+"I love it."
+
+He went out a few minutes later to telephone for her to Mrs. Lescott,
+and gave Adrienne _carte blanche_ to browse among his portfolios
+and stacked canvases until his return. In a few minutes, she discovered
+one of those efforts which she called his "rebellious pictures."
+
+These were such things as he painted, using no model except memory
+perhaps, not for the making of finished pictures, but merely to give
+outlet to his feelings; an outlet which some men might have found in
+talk.
+
+This particular canvas was roughly blocked in, and it was elementally
+simple, but each brush stroke had been thrown against the surface with
+the concentrated fire and energy of a blow, except the strokes that had
+painted the face, and there the brush had seemed to kiss the canvas.
+The picture showed a barefooted girl, standing, in barbaric simplicity
+of dress, in the glare of the arena, while a gaunt lion crouched eying
+her. Her head was lifted as though she were listening to faraway music.
+In the eyes was indomitable courage. That canvas was at once a
+declaration of love, and a _miserere_. Adrienne set it up beside
+her own portrait, and, as she studied the two with her chin resting on
+her gloved hand, her eyes cleared of questioning. Now, she knew what
+she missed in her own more beautiful likeness. It had been painted with
+all the admiration of the mind. This other had been dashed off straight
+from the heart--and this other was Sally! She replaced the sketch where
+she had found it, and Samson, returning, found her busy with little
+sketches of the Seine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Drennie," pleaded Wilfred Horton, as the two leaned on the deck rail
+of the _Mauretania_, returning from Europe, "are you going to hold
+me off indefinitely? I've served my seven years for Rachel, and thrown
+in some extra time. Am I no nearer the goal?"
+
+The girl looked at the oily heave of the leaden and cheerless
+Atlantic, and its somber tones found reflection in her eyes. She shook
+her head.
+
+"I wish I knew," she said, wearily. Then, she added, vehemently: "I'm
+not worth it, Wilfred. Let me go. Chuck me out of your life as a little
+pig who can't read her own heart; who is too utterly selfish to decide
+upon her own life."
+
+"Is it"--he put the question with foreboding--"that, after all, I was
+a prophet? Have you--and South--wiped your feet on the doormat marked
+'Platonic friendship'? Have you done that, Drennie?"
+
+She looked up into his eyes. Her own were wide and honest and very
+full of pain.
+
+"No," she said; "we haven't done that, yet. I guess we won't.... I
+think he'd rather stay outside, Wilfred. If I was sure I loved him, and
+that he loved me, I'd feel like a cheat--there is the other girl to
+think of.... And, besides, I'm not sure what I want myself.... But I'm
+horribly afraid I'm going to end by losing you both."
+
+Horton stood silent. It was tea-time, and from below came the strains
+of the ship's orchestra. A few ulster-muffled passengers gloomily paced
+the deck.
+
+"You won't lose us both, Drennie," he said, steadily. "You may lose
+your choice--but, if you find yourself able to fall back on
+substitutes, I'll still be there, waiting."
+
+For once, he did not meet her scrutiny, or know of it. His own eyes
+were fixed on the slow swing of heavy, gray-green waters. He was
+smiling, but it is as a man smiles when he confronts despair, and
+pretends that everything is quite all right. The girl looked at him
+with a choke in her throat.
+
+"Wilfred," she said, laying her hand on his arm, "I'm not worth
+worrying over. Really, I'm not. If Samson South proposed to me to-day,
+I know that I should refuse him. I am not at all sure that I am the
+least little bit in love with him. Only, don't you see I can't be quite
+sure I'm not? It would be horrible if we all made a mistake. May I have
+till Christmas to make up my mind for all time? I'll tell you then,
+dear, if you care to wait."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tamarack Spicer sat on the top of a box car, swinging his legs over
+the side. He was clad in overalls, and in the pockets of his breeches
+reposed a bulging flask of red liquor, and an unbulging pay envelope.
+Tamarack had been "railroading" for several months this time. He had
+made a new record for sustained effort and industry, but now June was
+beckoning him to the mountains with vagabond yearnings for freedom and
+leisure. Many things invited his soul. Almost four years had passed
+since Samson had left the mountains, and in four years a woman can
+change her mind. Sally might, when they met on the road, greet him once
+more as a kinsman, and agree to forget his faulty method of courtship.
+This time, he would be more diplomatic. Yesterday, he had gone to the
+boss, and "called for his time." To-day, he was paid off, and a free
+lance.
+
+As he reflected on these matters, a fellow trainman came along the top
+of the car, and sat down at Tamarack's side. This brakeman had also
+been recruited from the mountains, though from another section--over
+toward the Virginia line.
+
+"So yer quittin'?" observed the new-comer.
+
+Spicer nodded.
+
+"Goin' back thar on Misery?"
+
+Again, Tamarack answered with a jerk of his head.
+
+"I've been layin' off ter tell ye somethin', Tam'rack."
+
+"Cut her loose."
+
+"I laid over in Hixon last week, an' some fellers that used ter know
+my mother's folks took me down in the cellar of Hollman's store, an'
+give me some licker."
+
+"What of hit?"
+
+"They was talkin' 'bout you."
+
+"What did they say?"
+
+"I seen that they was enemies of yours, an' they wasn't in no good
+humor, so, when they axed me ef I knowed ye, I 'lowed I didn't know
+nothin' good about ye. I had ter cuss ye out, or git in trouble myself."
+
+Tamarack cursed the whole Hollman tribe, and his companion went on:
+
+"Jim Asberry was thar. He 'lowed they'd found out thet you'd done shot
+Purvy thet time, an' he said"--the brakeman paused to add emphasis to
+his conclusion--"thet the next time ye come home, he 'lowed ter git ye
+plumb shore."
+
+Tamarack scowled.
+
+"Much obleeged," he replied.
+
+At Hixon, Tamarack Spicer strolled along the street toward the court-
+house. He wished to be seen. So long as it was broad daylight, and he
+displayed no hostility, he knew he was safe--and he had plans.
+
+Standing before the Hollman store were Jim Asberry and several
+companions. They greeted Tamarack affably, and he paused to talk.
+
+"Ridin' over ter Misery?" inquired Asberry.
+
+"'Lowed I mout as well."
+
+"Mind ef I rides with ye es fur es Jesse's place?"
+
+"Plumb glad ter have company," drawled Tamarack,
+
+They chatted of many things, and traveled slowly, but, when they came
+to those narrows where they could not ride stirrup to stirrup, each
+jockeyed for the rear position, and the man who found himself forced
+into the lead turned in his saddle and talked back over his shoulder,
+with wary, though seemingly careless, eyes. Each knew the other was
+bent on his murder.
+
+At Purvy's gate, Asberry waved farewell, and turned in. Tamarack rode
+on, but shortly he hitched his horse in the concealment of a hollow,
+walled with huge rocks, and disappeared into the laurel.
+
+He began climbing, in a crouched position, bringing each foot down
+noiselessly, and pausing often to listen. Jim Asberry had not been
+outwardly armed when he left Spicer. But, soon, the brakeman's
+delicately attuned ears caught a sound that made him lie flat in the
+lee of a great log, where he was masked in clumps of flowering
+rhododendron. Presently, Asberry passed him, also walking cautiously,
+but hurriedly, and cradling a Winchester rifle in the hollow of his
+arm. Then, Tamarack knew that Asberry was taking this cut to head him
+off, and waylay him in the gorge a mile away by road but a short
+distance only over the hill. Spicer held his heavy revolver cocked in
+his hand, but it was too near the Purvy house to risk a shot. He waited
+a moment, and then, rising, went on noiselessly with a snarling grin,
+stalking the man who was stalking him.
+
+Asberry found a place at the foot of a huge pine where the undergrowth
+would cloak him. Twenty yards below ran the creek-bed road, returning
+from its long horseshoe deviation. When he had taken his position, his
+faded butternut clothing matched the earth as inconspicuously as a
+quail matches dead leaves, and he settled himself to wait. Slowly and
+with infinite caution, his intended victim stole down, guarding each
+step, until he was in short and certain range, but, instead of being at
+the front, he came from the back. He, also, lay flat on his stomach,
+and raised the already cocked pistol. He steadied it in a two-handed
+grip against a tree trunk, and trained it with deliberate care on a
+point to the left of the other man's spine just below the shoulder
+blades.
+
+Then, he pulled the trigger! He did not go down to inspect his work.
+It was not necessary. The instantaneous fashion with which the head of
+the ambuscader settled forward on its face told him all he wanted to
+know. He slipped back to his horse, mounted and rode fast to the house
+of Spicer South, demanding asylum.
+
+The next day came word that, if Tamarack Spicer would surrender and
+stand trial, in a court dominated by the Hollmans, the truce would
+continue. Otherwise, the "war was on."
+
+The Souths flung back this message:
+
+"Come and git him."
+
+But Hollman and Purvy, hypocritically clamoring for the sanctity of
+the law, made no effort to come and "git him." They knew that Spicer
+South's house was now a fortress, prepared for siege. They knew that
+every trail thither was picketed. Also, they knew a better way. This
+time, they had the color of the law on their side. The Circuit Judge,
+through the Sheriff, asked for troops, and troops came. Their tents
+dotted the river bank below the Hixon Bridge. A detail under a white
+flag went out after Tamarack Spicer. The militia Captain in command,
+who feared neither feudist nor death, was courteously received. He had
+brains, and he assured them that he acted under orders which could not
+be disobeyed. Unless they surrendered the prisoner, gatling guns would
+follow. If necessary they would be dragged behind ox-teams. Many
+militiamen might be killed, but for each of them the State had another.
+If Spicer would surrender, the officer would guarantee him personal
+protection, and, if it seemed necessary, a change of venue would secure
+him trial in another circuit. For hours, the clan deliberated. For the
+soldiers they felt no enmity. For the young Captain they felt an
+instinctive liking. He was a man.
+
+Old Spicer South, restored to an echo of his former robustness by the
+call of action, gave the clan's verdict.
+
+"Hit hain't the co'te we're skeered of. Ef this boy goes ter town, he
+won't never git inter no co'te. He'll be murdered."
+
+The officer held out his hand.
+
+"As man to man," he said, "I pledge you my word that no one shall take
+him except by process of law. I'm not working for the Hollmans, or the
+Purvys. I know their breed,"
+
+For a space, old South looked into the soldier's eyes, and the soldier
+looked back.
+
+"I'll take yore handshake on thet bargain," said the mountaineer,
+gravely. "Tam'rack," he added, in a voice of finality, "ye've got ter
+go."
+
+The officer had meant what he said. He marched his prisoner into Hixon
+at the center of a hollow square, with muskets at the ready. And yet,
+as the boy passed into the court-house yard, with a soldier rubbing
+elbows on each side, a cleanly aimed shot sounded from somewhere. The
+smokeless powder told no tale and with blue shirts and army hats
+circling him, Tamarack fell and died.
+
+That afternoon, one of Hollman's henchmen was found lying in the road
+with his lifeless face in the water of the creek. The next day, as old
+Spicer South stood at the door of his cabin, a rifle barked from the
+hillside, and he fell, shot through the left shoulder by a bullet
+intended for his heart. All this while, the troops were helplessly
+camped at Hixon. They had power and inclination to go out and get men,
+but there was no man to get.
+
+The Hollmans had used the soldiers as far as they wished; they had
+made them pull the chestnuts out of the fire and Tamarack Spicer out of
+his stronghold. They now refused to swear out additional warrants.
+
+A detail had rushed into Hollman's store an instant after the shot
+which killed Tamarack was fired. Except for a woman buying a card of
+buttons, and a fair-haired clerk waiting on her, they found the
+building empty.
+
+Back beyond, the hills were impenetrable, and answered no questions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Old Spicer South would ten years ago have put a bandage on his wound
+and gone about his business, but now he tossed under his patchwork
+quilt, and Brother Spencer expressed grave doubts for his recovery.
+With his counsel unavailable Wile McCager, by common consent, assumed
+something like the powers of a regent and took upon himself the duties
+to which Samson should have succeeded.
+
+That a Hollman should have been able to elude the pickets and
+penetrate the heart of South territory to Spicer South's cabin, was
+both astounding and alarming. The war was on without question now, and
+there must be council. Wile McCager had sent out a summons for the
+family heads to meet that afternoon at his mill. It was Saturday--"mill
+day"--and in accordance with ancient custom the lanes would be more
+traveled than usual.
+
+Those men who came by the wagon road afforded no unusual spectacle,
+for behind each saddle sagged a sack of grain. Their faces bore no
+stamp of unwonted excitement, but every man balanced a rifle across his
+pommel. None the less, their purpose was grim, and their talk when they
+had gathered was to the point.
+
+Old McCager, himself sorely perplexed, voiced the sentiment that the
+others had been too courteous to express. With Spicer South bed-ridden
+and Samson a renegade, they had no adequate leader. McCager was a solid
+man of intrepid courage and honesty, but grinding grist was his
+avocation, not strategy and tactics. The enemy had such masters of
+intrigue as Purvy and Judge Hollman.
+
+Then, a lean sorrel mare came jogging into view, switching her fly-
+bitten tail, and on the mare's back, urging him with a long, leafy
+switch, sat a woman. Behind her sagged the two loaded ends of a corn-
+sack. She rode like the mountain women, facing much to the side, yet
+unlike them. Her arms did not flap. She did not bump gawkily up and
+down in her saddle. Her blue calico dress caught the sun at a distance,
+but her blue sunbonnet shaded and masked her face. She was lithe and
+slim, and her violet eyes were profoundly serious, and her lips were as
+resolutely set as Joan of Arc's might have been, for Sally Miller had
+come only ostensibly to have her corn ground to meal. She had really
+come to speak for the absent chief, and she knew that she would be met
+with derision. The years had sobered the girl, but her beauty had
+increased, though it was now of a chastened type, which gave her a
+strange and rather exalted refinement of expression.
+
+Wile McCager came to the mill door, as she rode up, and lifted the
+sack from her horse.
+
+"Howdy, Sally?" he greeted.
+
+"Tol'able, thank ye," said Sally. "I'm goin' ter get off."
+
+As she entered the great half-lighted room, where the mill stones
+creaked on their cumbersome shafts, the hum of discussion sank to
+silence. The place was brown with age and dirt, and powdered with a
+coarse dusting of meal. The girl nodded to the mountaineers gathered in
+conclave, then, turning to the miller she announced:
+
+"I'm going to send for Samson."
+
+The statement was at first met with dead silence, then came a rumble
+of indignant dissent, but for that the girl was prepared, as she was
+prepared for the contemptuous laughter which followed.
+
+"I reckon if Samson was here," she said, dryly, "you all wouldn't
+think it was quite so funny."
+
+Old Caleb Wiley spat through his bristling beard, and his voice was a
+quavering rumble.
+
+"What we wants is a man. We hain't got no use fer no traitors thet's
+too almighty damn busy doin' fancy work ter stand by their kith an' kin."
+
+"That's a lie!" said the girl, scornfully. "There's just one man
+living that's smart enough to match Jesse Purvy--an' that one man is
+Samson. Samson's got the right to lead the Souths, and he's going to do
+it--ef he wants to."
+
+"Sally," Wile McCager spoke, soothingly, "don't go gittin' mad. Caleb
+talks hasty. We knows ye used ter be Samson's gal, an' we hain't aimin'
+ter hurt yore feelin's. But Samson's done left the mountings. I reckon
+ef he wanted ter come back, he'd a-come afore now. Let him stay whar
+he's at."
+
+"Whar is he at?" demanded old Caleb Wiley, in a truculent voice.
+
+"That's his business," Sally flashed back, "but I know. All I want to
+tell you is this. Don't you make a move till I have time to get word to
+him. I tell you, he's got to have his say."
+
+"I reckon we hain't a-goin' ter wait," sneered Caleb, "fer a feller
+thet won't let hit be known whar he's a-sojournin' at. Ef ye air so
+shore of him, why won't ye tell us whar he is now?"
+
+"That's my business, too." Sally's voice was resolute. "I've got a
+letter here--it'll take two days to get to Samson. It'll take him two
+or three days more to get here. You've got to wait a week."
+
+"Sally," the temporary chieftain spoke still in a patient, humoring
+sort of voice, as to a tempestuous child, "thar hain't no place ter
+mail a letter nigher then Hixon. No South can't ride inter Hixon, an'
+ride out again. The mail-carrier won't be down this way fer two days
+yit."
+
+"I'm not askin' any South to ride into Hixon. I recollect another time
+when Samson was the only one that would do that," she answered, still
+scornfully. "I didn't come here to ask favors. I came to give orders--
+for him. A train leaves soon in the morning. My letter's goin' on that
+train."
+
+"Who's goin' ter take hit ter town fer ye?"
+
+"I'm goin' to take it for myself." Her reply was given as a matter of
+course.
+
+"That wouldn't hardly be safe, Sally," the miller demurred; "this
+hain't no time fer a gal ter be galavantin' around by herself in the
+night time. Hit's a-comin' up ter storm, an' ye've got thirty miles ter
+ride, an' thirty-five back ter yore house."
+
+"I'm not scared," she replied. "I'm goin' an' I'm warnin' you now, if
+you do anything that Samson don't like, you'll have to answer to him,
+when he comes." She turned, walking very erect and dauntless to her
+sorrel mare, and disappeared at a gallop.
+
+"I reckon," said Wile McCager, breaking the silence at last, "hit
+don't make no great dif'rence. He won't hardly come, nohow." Then, he
+added: "But thet boy is smart."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Samson's return from Europe, after a year's study, was in the nature
+of a moderate triumph. With the art sponsorship of George Lescott, and
+the social sponsorship of Adrienne, he found that orders for portraits,
+from those who could pay munificently, seemed to seek him. He was
+tasting the novelty of being lionized.
+
+That summer, Mrs. Lescott opened her house on Long Island early, and
+the life there was full of the sort of gaiety that comes to pleasant
+places when young men in flannels and girls in soft summery gowns and
+tanned cheeks are playing wholesomely, and singing tunefully, and
+making love--not too seriously.
+
+Samson, tremendously busy these days in a new studio of his own, had
+run over for a week. Horton was, of course, of the party, and George
+Lescott was doing the honors as host. Besides these, all of whom
+regarded themselves as members of the family, there was a group of even
+younger folk, and the broad halls and terraces and tennis courts rang
+all day long with their laughter, and the floors trembled at night
+under the rhythmical tread of their dancing.
+
+Off across the lawns and woodlands stretched the blue, sail-flecked
+waters of the Sound, and on the next hill rose the tile roofs and cream
+-white walls of the country club.
+
+One evening, Adrienne left the dancers for the pergola, where she took
+refuge under a mass of honeysuckle.
+
+Samson South followed her. She saw him coming, and smiled. She was
+contrasting this Samson, loosely clad in flannels, with the Samson she
+had first seen rising awkwardly to greet her in the studio.
+
+"You should have stayed inside and made yourself agreeable to the
+girls," Adrienne reproved him, as he came up. "What's the use of making
+a lion of you, if you won't roar for the visitors?"
+
+"I've been roaring," laughed the man. "I've just been explaining to
+Miss Willoughby that we only eat the people we kill in Kentucky on
+certain days of solemn observance and sacrifice. I wanted to be
+agreeable to you, Drennie, for a while."
+
+The girl shook her head sternly, but she smiled and made a place for
+him at her side. She wondered what form his being agreeable to her
+would take.
+
+"I wonder if the man or woman lives," mused Samson, "to whom the
+fragrance of honeysuckle doesn't bring back some old memory that is as
+strong--and sweet--as itself."
+
+The girl did not at once answer him. The breeze was stirring the hair
+on her temples and neck. The moon was weaving a lace pattern on the
+ground, and filtering its silver light through the vines. At last, she
+asked:
+
+"Do you ever find yourself homesick, Samson, these days?"
+
+The man answered with a short laugh. Then, his words came softly, and
+not his own words, but those of one more eloquent:
+
+  "'Who hath desired the Sea? Her excellent loneliness rather
+  "'Than the forecourts of kings, and her uttermost pits
+       than the streets where men gather....
+  "'His Sea that his being fulfills?
+  "'So and no otherwise--"so and no otherwise hillmen
+       desire their hills.'"
+
+"And yet," she said, and a trace of the argumentative stole into her
+voice, "you haven't gone back."
+
+"No." There was a note of self-reproach in his voice. "But soon I
+shall go. At least, for a time. I've been thinking a great deal lately
+about 'my fluttered folk and wild.' I'm just beginning to understand my
+relation to them, and my duty."
+
+"Your duty is no more to go back there and throw away your life," she
+found herself instantly contending, "than it is the duty of the young
+eagle, who has learned to fly, to go back to the nest where he was
+hatched."
+
+"But, Drennie," he said, gently, "suppose the young eagle is the only
+one that knows how to fly--and suppose he could teach the others? Don't
+you see? I've only seen it myself for a little while."
+
+"What is it that--that you see now?"
+
+"I must go back, not to relapse, but to come to be a constructive
+force. I must carry some of the outside world to Misery. I must take to
+them, because I am one of them, gifts that they would reject from other
+hands."
+
+"Will they accept them even from you?"
+
+"Drennie, you once said that, if I grew ashamed of my people, ashamed
+even of their boorish manners, their ignorance, their crudity, you
+would have no use for me."
+
+"I still say that," she answered.
+
+"Well, I'm not ashamed of them. I went through that, but it's over."
+
+She sat silent for a while, then cried suddenly:
+
+"I don't want you to go!" The moment she had said it, she caught
+herself with a nervous little laugh, and added a postscript of
+whimsical nonsense to disarm her utterance of its telltale feeling.
+"Why, I'm just getting you civilized, yourself. It took years to get
+your hair cut."
+
+He ran his palm over his smoothly trimmed head, and laughed.
+
+"Delilah, Oh, Delilah!" he said. "I was resolute, but you have shorn
+me."
+
+"Don't!" she exclaimed. "Don't call me that!"
+
+"Then, Drennie, dear," he answered, lightly, "don't dissuade me from
+the most decent resolve I have lately made."
+
+From the house came the strains of an alluring waltz. For a little
+time, they listened without speech, then the girl said very gravely:
+
+"You won't--you won't still feel bound to kill your enemies, will you,
+Samson?"
+
+The man's face hardened.
+
+"I believe I'd rather not talk about that. I shall have to win back
+the confidence I have lost. I shall have to take a place at the head of
+my clan by proving myself a man--and a man by their own standards. It
+is only at their head that I can lead them. If the lives of a few
+assassins have to be forfeited, I sha'n't hesitate at that. I shall
+stake my own against them fairly. The end is worth it."
+
+The girl breathed deeply, then she heard Samson's voice again:
+
+"Drennie, I want you to understand, that if I succeed it is your
+success. You took me raw and unfashioned, and you have made me. There
+is no way of thanking you."
+
+"There is a way," she contradicted. "You can thank me by feeling just
+that way about it."
+
+"Then, I do thank you."
+
+She sat looking up at him, her eyes wide and questioning.
+
+"Exactly what do you feel, Samson," she asked. "I mean about me?"
+
+He leaned a little toward her, and the fragrance and subtle beauty of
+her stole into his veins and brain, in a sudden intoxication. His hand
+went out to seize hers. This beauty which would last and not wither
+into a hag's ugliness with the first breath of age--as mountain beauty
+does--was hypnotizing him. Then, he straightened and stood looking down.
+
+"Don't ask me that, please," he said, in a carefully controlled voice.
+"I don't even want to ask myself. My God, Drennie, don't you see that
+I'm afraid to answer that?"
+
+She rose from her seat, and stood for just an instant rather
+unsteadily before him, then she laughed.
+
+"Samson, Samson!" she challenged. "The moon is making us as foolish as
+children. Old friend, we are growing silly. Let's go in, and be
+perfectly good hostesses and social lions."
+
+Slowly, Samson South came to his feet. His voice was in the dead-level
+pitch which Wilfred had once before heard. His eyes were as clear and
+hard as transparent flint.
+
+"I'm sorry to be of trouble, George," he said, quietly. "But you must
+get me to New York at once--by motor. I must take a train South to-
+night."
+
+"No bad news, I hope," suggested Lescott.
+
+For an instant, Samson forgot his four years of veneer. The century of
+prenatal barbarism broke out fiercely. He was seeing things far away--
+and forgetting things near by. His eyes blazed and his fingers twitched.
+
+"Hell, no!" he exclaimed. "The war's on, and my hands are freed!"
+
+For an instant, as no one spoke, he stood breathing heavily, then,
+wheeling, rushed toward the house as though just across its threshold
+lay the fight into which lie was aching to hurl himself.
+
+The next afternoon, Adrienne and Samson were sitting with a gaily
+chattering group at the side lines of the tennis courts.
+
+"When you go back to the mountains, Samson," Wilfred was suggesting,
+"we might form a partnership. 'South, Horton and Co., development of
+coal and timber.' There are millions in it."
+
+"Five years ago, I should have met you with a Winchester rifle,"
+laughed the Kentuckian. "Now I shall not."
+
+"I'll go with you, Horton, and make a sketch or two," volunteered
+George Lescott, who just then arrived from town. "And, by the way,
+Samson, here's a letter that came for you just as I left the studio."
+
+The mountaineer took the envelope with a Hixon postmark, and for an
+instant gazed at it with a puzzled expression. It was addressed in a
+feminine hand, which he did not recognize. It was careful, but perfect,
+writing, such as one sees in a school copybook. With an apology he tore
+the covering, and read the letter. Adrienne, glancing at his face, saw
+it suddenly pale and grow as set and hard as marble.
+
+Samson's eyes were dwelling with only partial comprehension on the
+script. This is what he read:
+
+"DEAR SAMSON: The war is on again. Tamarack Spicer has killed Jim Asberry,
+and the Hollmans have killed Tamarack. Uncle Spicer is shot, but he may
+get well. There is nobody to lead the Souths. I am trying to hold them
+down until I hear from you. Don't come if you don't want to--but the gun
+is ready. With love,
+
+SALLY."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Samson, throwing things hurriedly into his bag, heard a knock on his
+door. He opened it, and outside in the hall stood Adrienne. Her face
+was pale, and she leaned a little on the hand which rested against the
+white jamb.
+
+"What does it mean?" she asked.
+
+He came over.
+
+"It means, Drennie," he said, "that you may make a pet of a leopard cub,
+but there will come a day when something of the jungle comes out in him
+--and he must go. My uncle has been shot, and the feud is on--I've been
+sent for."
+
+He paused, and she half-whispered in an appealing voice:
+
+"Don't go."
+
+"You don't mean that," he said, quietly. "If it were you, you would
+go. Whether I get back here or not"--he hesitated--"my gratitude will
+be with you--always." He broke off, and said suddenly: "Drennie, I
+don't want to say good-by to you. I can't."
+
+"It's not necessary yet," she answered. "I'm going to drive you to New
+York."
+
+"No!" he exclaimed. "It's too far, and I've got to go fast----"
+
+"That's why I'm going," she promptly assured him. "I'm the only fool
+on these premises that can get all the speed out of a car that's in her
+engine--and the constables are good to me. I just came up here to--" she
+hesitated, then added--"to see you alone for a moment, and to say that
+teacher has never had such a bright little pupil, in her life--and--"
+the flippancy with which she was masking her feeling broke and she
+added, in a shaken voice as she thrust out her hand, man-fashion--"and
+to say, God keep you, boy."
+
+He seized the hand in both his own, and gripped it hard. He tried to
+speak, but only shook his head with a rueful smile.
+
+"I'll be waiting at the door with the car," she told him, as she left.
+
+Horton, too, came in to volunteer assistance.
+
+"Wilfred," said Samson, feelingly, 'there isn't any man I'd rather
+have at my back, in a stand-up fight. But this isn't exactly that sort.
+Where I'm going, a fellow has got to be invisible. No, you can't help,
+now. Come down later. We'll organize Horton, South and Co."
+
+"South, Horton and Co.," corrected Wilfred; "native sons first."
+
+At that moment, Adrienne believed she had decided the long-mooted
+question. Of course, she had not. It was merely the stress of the
+moment; exaggerating the importance of one she was losing at the
+expense of the one who was left. Still, as she sat in the car waiting,
+her world seemed slipping into chaos under her feet, and, when Samson
+had taken his place at her side, the machine leaped forward into a
+reckless plunge of speed.
+
+Samson stopped at his studio, and threw open an old closet where, from
+a littered pile of discarded background draperies, canvases and
+stretchers, he fished out a buried and dust-covered pair of saddlebags.
+They had long lain there forgotten, but they held the rusty clothes in
+which he had left Misery. He threw them over his arm and dropped them
+at Adrienne's feet, as he handed her the studio keys.
+
+"Will you please have George look after things, and make the necessary
+excuses to my sitters? He'll find a list of posing appointments in the
+desk."
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"What are those?" she asked, gazing at the great leather pockets as at
+some relic unearthed from Pompeian excavations.
+
+"Saddlebags, Drennie," he said, "and in them are homespun and jeans.
+One can't lead his 'fluttered folk and wild' in a cutaway coat."
+
+Shortly they were at the station, and the man, standing at the side of
+the machine, took her hand.
+
+"It's not good-by, you know," he said, smiling. "Just _auf
+Wiedersehen_."
+
+She nodded and smiled, too, but, as she smiled, she shivered, and
+turned the car slowly. There was no need to hurry, now.
+
+Samson had caught the fastest west-bound express on the schedule. In
+thirty-six hours, he would be at Hixon. There were many things which
+his brain must attack and digest in these hours. He must arrange his
+plan of action to its minutest detail, because he would have as little
+time for reflection, once he had reached his own country, as a wildcat
+flung into a pack of hounds.
+
+From the railroad station to his home, he must make his way--most
+probably fight his way--through thirty miles of hostile territory where
+all the trails were watched. And yet, for the time, all that seemed too
+remotely unreal to hold his thoughts. He was seeing the coolly waving
+curtains of flowered chintz that stirred in the windows of his room at
+the Lescott house and the crimson ramblers that nodded against the sky.
+He was hearing a knock on the door, and seeing, as it opened, the
+figure of Adrienne Lescott and the look that had been in her eyes.
+
+He took out Sally's letter, and read it once more. He read it
+mechanically and as a piece of news that had brought evil tidings.
+Then, suddenly, another aspect of it struck him--an aspect to which the
+shock of its reception had until this tardy moment blinded him. The
+letter was perfectly grammatical and penned in a hand of copy-book
+roundness and evenness. The address, the body of the missive, and the
+signature, were all in one chirography. She would not have intrusted
+the writing of this letter to any one else.
+
+Sally had learned to write!
+
+Moreover, at the end were the words "with love." It was all plain now.
+Sally had never repudiated him. She was declaring herself true to her
+mission and her love. All that heartbreak through which he had gone had
+been due to his own misconception, and in that misconception he had
+drawn into himself and had stopped writing to her. Even his occasional
+letters had for two years ceased to brighten her heart-strangling
+isolation--and she was still waiting.... She had sent no word of appeal
+until the moment had come of which she had promised to inform him.
+Sally, abandoned and alone, had been fighting her way up--that she
+might stand on his level.
+
+"Good God!" groaned the man, in abjectly bitter self-contempt. His
+hand went involuntarily to his cropped head, and dropped with a gesture
+of self-doubting. He looked down at his tan shoes and silk socks. He
+rolled back his shirtsleeve and contemplated the forearm that had once
+been as brown and tough as leather. It was now the arm of a city man,
+except for the burning of one outdoor week. He was returning at the
+eleventh hour--stripped of the faith of his kinsmen, half-stripped of
+his faith in himself. If he were to realize the constructive dreams of
+which he had last night so confidently prattled to Adrienne, he must
+lead his people from under the blighting shadow of the feud.
+
+Yet, if he was to lead them at all, he must first regain their shaken
+confidence, and to do that he must go, at their head, through this mire
+of war to vindication. Only a fighting South could hope to be heard in
+behalf of peace. His eventual regeneration belonged to some to-morrow.
+To-day held the need of such work as that of the first Samson--to slay.
+
+He must reappear before his kinsmen as much as possible the boy who
+had left them--not the fop with newfangled affectations. His eyes fell
+upon the saddlebags on the floor of the Pullman, and he smiled
+satirically. He would like to step from the train at Hixon and walk
+brazenly through the town in those old clothes, challenging every
+hostile glance. If they shot him down on the streets, as they certainly
+would do, it would end his questioning and his anguish of dilemma. He
+would welcome that, but it would, after all, be shirking the issue.
+
+He must get out of Hixon and into his own country unrecognized. The
+lean boy of four years ago was the somewhat filled out man now. The one
+concession that he had made to Paris life was the wearing of a closely
+cropped mustache. That he still wore--had worn it chiefly because he
+liked to hear Adrienne's humorous denunciation of it. He knew that, in
+his present guise and dress, he had an excellent chance of walking
+through the streets of Hixon as a stranger. And, after leaving Hixon,
+there was a mission to be performed at Jesse Purvy's store. As he
+thought of that mission a grim glint came to his pupils.
+
+All journeys end, and as Samson passed through the tawdry cars of the
+local train near Hixon he saw several faces which he recognized, but
+they either eyed him in inexpressive silence, or gave him the greeting
+of the "furriner."
+
+Then the whistle shrieked for the trestle over the Middle Fork, and at
+only a short distance rose the cupola of the brick court-house and the
+scattered roofs of the town. Scattered over the green slopes by the
+river bank lay the white spread of a tented company street, and, as he
+looked out, he saw uniformed figures moving to and fro, and caught the
+ring of a bugle call. So the militia was on deck; things must be bad,
+he reflected. He stood on the platform and looked down as the engine
+roared along the trestle. There were two gatling guns. One pointed its
+muzzle toward the town, and the other scowled up at the face of the
+mountain. Sentries paced their beats. Men in undershirts lay dozing
+outside tent flaps. It was all a picture of disciplined readiness, and
+yet Samson knew that soldiers made of painted tin would be equally
+effective. These military forces must remain subservient to local civil
+authorities, and the local civil authorities obeyed the nod of Judge
+Hollman and Jesse Purvy.
+
+As Samson crossed the toll-bridge to the town proper he passed two
+brown-shirted militiamen, lounging on the rail of the middle span. They
+grinned at him, and, recognizing the outsider from his clothes, one of
+them commented:
+
+"Ain't this the hell of a town?"
+
+"It's going to be," replied Samson, enigmatically, as he went on.
+
+Still unrecognized, he hired a horse at the livery stable, and for two
+hours rode in silence, save for the easy creaking of his stirrup
+leathers and the soft thud of hoofs.
+
+The silence soothed him. The brooding hills lulled his spirit as a
+crooning song lulls a fretful child. Mile after mile unrolled forgotten
+vistas. Something deep in himself murmured:
+
+"Home!"
+
+It was late afternoon when he saw ahead of him the orchard of Purvy's
+place, and read on the store wall, a little more weather-stained, but
+otherwise unchanged:
+
+"Jesse Purvy, General Merchandise."
+
+The porch of the store was empty, and as Samson flung himself from his
+saddle there was no one to greet him. This was surprising, since,
+ordinarily, two or three of Purvy's personal guardsmen loafed at the
+front to watch the road. Just now the guard should logically be
+doubled. Samson still wore his Eastern clothes--for he wanted to go
+through that door unknown. As Samson South he could not cross its
+threshold either way. But when he stepped up on to the rough porch
+flooring no one challenged his advance. The yard and orchard were quiet
+from their front fence to the grisly stockade at the rear, and,
+wondering at these things, the young man stood for a moment looking
+about at the afternoon peace before he announced himself.
+
+Yet Samson had not come to the stronghold of his enemy for the purpose
+of assassination. There had been another object in his mind--an utterly
+mad idea, it is true, yet so bold of conception that it held a ghost of
+promise. He had meant to go into Jesse Purvy's store and chat
+artlessly, like some inquisitive "furriner." He would ask questions
+which by their very impertinence might be forgiven on the score of a
+stranger's folly. But, most of all, he wanted to drop the casual
+information, which he should assume to have heard on the train, that
+Samson South was returning, and to mark, on the assassin leader, the
+effect of the news. In his new code it was necessary to give at least
+the rattler's warning before he struck, and he meant to strike. If he
+were recognized, well--he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+But as he stood on the outside, wiping the perspiration from his
+forehead, for the ride had been warm, he heard voices within. They were
+loud and angry voices. It occurred to him that by remaining where he
+was he might gain more information than by hurrying in.
+
+"I've done been your executioner fer twenty years," complained a
+voice, which Samson at once recognized as that of Aaron Hollis, the
+most trusted of Purvy's personal guards. "I hain't never laid down on
+ye yet. Me an' Jim Asberry killed old Henry South. We laid fer his boy,
+an' would 'a' got him ef ye'd only said ther word. I went inter Hixon,
+an' killed Tam'rack Spicer, with soldiers all round me. There hain't no
+other damn fool in these mountings would 'a' took such a long chance es
+thet. I'm tired of hit. They're a-goin' ter git me, an' I wants ter
+leave, an' you won't come clean with the price of a railroad ticket to
+Oklahoma. Now, damn yore stingy soul, I gits that ticket or I gits you!"
+
+"Aaron, ye can't scare me into doin' nothin' I ain't aimin' to do."
+The old baron of the vendetta spoke in a cold, stoical voice. "I tell
+ye I ain't quite through with ye yet. In due an' proper time I'll see
+that ye get yer ticket." Then he added, with conciliating softness:
+"We've been friends a long while. Let's talk this thing over before we
+fall out."
+
+"Thar hain't nothin' ter talk over," stormed Aaron. "Ye're jest tryin'
+ter kill time till the boys gits hyar, and then I reckon ye 'lows ter
+have me kilt like yer've had me kill them others. Hit hain't no use.
+I've done sent 'em away. When they gits back hyar, either you'll be in
+hell, or I'll be on my way outen the mountings."
+
+Samson stood rigid. Here was the confession of one murderer, with no
+denial from the other. The truce was of. Why should he wait? Cataracts
+seemed to thunder in his brain, and yet he stood there, his hand in his
+coat-pocket, clutching the grip of a magazine pistol. Samson South the
+old, and Samson South the new, were writhing in the life-and-death
+grapple of two codes. Then, before decision came, he heard a sharp
+report inside, and the heavy fall of a body to the floor.
+
+A wildly excited figure came plunging through the door, and Samson's
+left hand swept out, and seized its shoulder in a sudden vise grip.
+
+"Do you know me?" he inquired, as the mountaineer pulled away and
+crouched back with startled surprise and vicious frenzy.
+
+"No, damn ye! Git outen my road!" Aaron thrust his cocked rifle close
+against the stranger's face. From its muzzle came the acrid stench of
+freshly burned powder. "Git outen my road afore I kills ye!"
+
+"My name is Samson South."
+
+Before the astounded finger on the rifle trigger could be crooked,
+Samson's pistol spoke from the pocket, and, as though in echo, the
+rifle blazed, a little too late and a shade too high, over his head, as
+the dead man's arms went up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Except for those two reports there was no sound. Samson stood still,
+anticipating an uproar of alarm. Now, he should doubtless have to pay
+with his life for both the deaths which would inevitably and logically
+be attributed to his agency. But, strangely enough, no clamor arose.
+The shot inside had been muffled, and those outside, broken by the
+intervening store, did not arouse the house. Purvy's bodyguard had been
+sent away by Hollis on a false alarm. Only the "womenfolks" and
+children remained indoors, and they were drowning with a piano any
+sounds that might have come from without. That piano was the chief
+emblem of Purvy's wealth. It represented the acme of "having things
+hung up"; that ancient and expressive phrase, which had come down from
+days when the pioneers' worldly condition was gauged by the hams
+hanging in the smokehouse and the peppers, tobacco and herbs strung
+high against the rafters.
+
+Now, Samson South stood looking down, uninterrupted, on what had been
+Aaron Hollis as it lay motionless at his feet. There was a powder-
+burned hole in the butternut shirt, and only a slender thread of blood
+trickled into the dirt-grimed cracks between the planks. The body was
+twisted sidewise, in one of those grotesque attitudes with which a
+sudden summons so frequently robs the greatest phenomenon of all its
+rightful dignity. The sun was gilding the roadside clods, and
+burnishing the greens of the treetops. The breeze was harping sleepily
+among the branches, and several geese stalked pompously along the
+creek's edge. On the top of the stockade a gray squirrel, sole witness
+to the tragedy, rose on his haunches, flirted his brush, and then, in a
+sudden leap of alarm, disappeared.
+
+Samson turned to the darkened doorway. Inside was emptiness, except
+for the other body, which had crumpled forward and face down across the
+counter. A glance showed that Jesse Purvy would no more fight back the
+coming of death. He was quite unarmed. Behind his spent body ranged
+shelves of general merchandise. Boxes of sardines, and cans of peaches
+were lined in homely array above him. His lifeless hand rested as
+though flung out in an oratorical gesture on a bolt of blue calico.
+
+Samson paused only for a momentary survey. His score was clean. He
+would not again have to agonize over the dilemma of old ethics and new.
+To-morrow, the word would spread like wildfire along Misery and
+Crippleshin, that Samson South was back, and that his coming had been
+signalized by these two deaths. The fact that he was responsible for
+only one--and that in self-defense--would not matter. They would prefer
+to believe that he had invaded the store and killed Purvy, and that
+Hollis had fallen in his master's defense at the threshold. Samson went
+out, still meeting no one, and continued his journey.
+
+Dusk was falling, when he hitched his horse in a clump of timber, and,
+lifting his saddlebags, began climbing to a cabin that sat far back in
+a thicketed cove. He was now well within South territory, and the need
+of masquerade had ended.
+
+The cabin had not, for years, been occupied. Its rooftree was leaning
+askew under rotting shingles. The doorstep was ivy-covered, and the
+stones of the hearth were broken. But it lay well hidden, and would
+serve his purposes.
+
+Shortly, a candle flickered inside, before a small hand mirror.
+Scissors and safety razor were for a while busy. The man who entered in
+impeccable clothes emerged fifteen minutes later--transformed. There
+appeared under the rising June crescent, a smooth-faced native, clad in
+stained store-clothes, with rough woolen socks showing at his brogan
+tops, and a battered felt hat drawn over his face. No one who had known
+the Samson South of four years ago would fail to recognize him now. And
+the strangest part, he told himself, was that he felt the old Samson.
+He no longer doubted his courage. He had come home, and his conscience
+was once more clear.
+
+The mountain roads and the mountain sides themselves were sweetly
+silent. Moon mist engulfed the flats in a lake of dreams, and, as the
+livery-stable horse halted to pant at the top of the final ridge, he
+could see below him his destination.
+
+The smaller knobs rose like little islands out of the vapor, and
+yonder, catching the moonlight like scraps of gray paper, were two
+roofs: that of his uncle's house--and that of the Widow Miller.
+
+At a point where a hand-bridge crossed the skirting creek, the boy
+dismounted. Ahead of him lay the stile where he had said good-by to
+Sally. The place was dark, and the chimney smokeless, but, as he came
+nearer, holding the shadows of the trees, he saw one sliver of light at
+the bottom of a solid shutter; the shutter of Sally's room. Yet, for a
+while, Samson stopped there, looking and making no sound. He stood at
+his Rubicon--and behind him lay all the glitter and culture of that
+other world, a world that had been good to him.
+
+That was to Samson South one of those pregnant and portentous moments
+with which life sometimes punctuates its turning points. At such times,
+all the set and solidified strata that go into the building of a man's
+nature may be uptossed and rearranged. So, the layers of a mountain
+chain and a continent that have for centuries remained steadfast may
+break and alter under the stirring of earthquake or volcano, dropping
+heights under water and throwing new ranges above the sea.
+
+There was passing before his eyes as he stood there, pausing, a
+panorama much vaster than any he had been able to conceive when last he
+stood there. He was seeing in review the old life and the new, lurid
+with contrasts, and, as the pictures of things thousands of miles away
+rose before his eyes as clearly as the serried backbone of the ridges,
+he was comparing and settling for all time the actual values and
+proportions of the things in his life.
+
+He saw the streets of Paris and New York, brilliant under their
+strings of opalescent lights; the _Champs Elysées_ ran in its
+smooth, tree-trimmed parquetry from the _Place de Concorde_ to the
+_Arc de Triomphe_, and the chatter and music of its cafés rang in
+his ears. The ivory spaces of Rome, from the Pincian Hill where his
+fancy saw almond trees in bloom to the _Piazza Venezia_, spread
+their eternal story before his imagination. He saw 'buses and hansoms
+slirring through the mud and fog of London and the endless _pot-
+pourri_ of Manhattan. All the things that the outside world had to
+offer; all that had ever stirred his pulses to a worship of the
+beautiful, the harmonious, the excellent, rose in exact value. Then, he
+saw again the sunrise as it would be to-morrow morning over these
+ragged hills. He saw the mists rise and grow wisp-like, and the disc of
+the sun gain color, and all the miracles of cannoning tempest and
+caressing calm--and, though he had come back to fight, a wonderful
+peace settled over him, for he knew that, if he must choose these, his
+native hills, or all the rest, he would forego all the rest.
+
+And Sally--would she be changed? His heart was hammering wildly now.
+Sally had remained loyal. It was a miracle, but it was the one thing
+that counted. He was going to her, and nothing else mattered. All the
+questions of dilemma were answered. He was Samson South come back to
+his own--to Sally, and the rifle. Nothing had changed! The same trees
+raised the same crests against the same sky. For every one of them, he
+felt a throb of deep emotion. Best of all, he himself had not changed
+in any cardinal respect, though he had come through changes and
+perplexities.
+
+He lifted his head, and sent out a long, clear whippoorwill call,
+which quavered on the night much like the other calls in the black
+hills around him. After a moment, he went nearer, in the shadow of a
+poplar, and repeated the call.
+
+Then, the cabin-door opened. Its jamb framed a patch of yellow
+candlelight, and, at the center, a slender silhouetted figure, in a
+fluttering, eager attitude of uncertainty. The figure turned slightly
+to one side, and, as it did so, the man saw clasped in her right hand
+the rifle, which had been his mission, bequeathed to her in trust. He
+saw, too, the delicate outline of her profile, with anxiously parted
+lips and a red halo about her soft hair. He watched the eager heave of
+her breast, and the spasmodic clutching of the gun to her heart. For
+four years, he had not given that familiar signal. Possibly, it had
+lost some of its characteristic quality, for she still seemed in doubt.
+She hesitated, and the man, invisible in the shadow, once more imitated
+the bird-note, but this time it was so low and soft that it seemed the
+voice of a whispering whippoorwill.
+
+Then, with a sudden glad little cry, she came running with her old
+fleet grace down to the road.
+
+Samson had vaulted the stile, and stood in the full moonlight. As he
+saw her coming he stretched out his arms and his voice broke from his
+throat in a half-hoarse, passionate cry:
+
+"Sally!"
+
+It was the only word he could have spoken just then, but it was all
+that was necessary. It told her everything. It was an outburst from a
+heart too full of emotion to grope after speech, the cry of a man for
+the One Woman who alone can call forth an inflection more eloquent than
+phrases and poetry. And, as she came into his outstretched arms as
+straight and direct as a homing pigeon, they closed about her in a
+convulsive grip that held her straining to him, almost crushing her in
+the tempest of his emotion.
+
+For a time, there was no speech, but to each of them it seemed that
+their tumultuous heart-beating must sound above the night music, and
+the telegraphy of heart-beats tells enough. Later, they would talk, but
+now, with a gloriously wild sense of being together, with a mutual
+intoxication of joy because all that they had dreamed was true, and all
+that they had feared was untrue, they stood there under the skies
+clasping each other--with the rifle between their breasts. Then as he
+held her close, he wondered that a shadow of doubt could ever have
+existed. He wondered if, except in some nightmare of hallucination, it
+had ever existed.
+
+The flutter of her heart was like that of a rapturous bird, and the
+play of her breath on his face like the fragrance of the elder blossoms.
+
+These were their stars twinkling overhead. These were their hills, and
+their moon was smiling on their tryst.
+
+He had gone and seen the world that lured him: he had met its
+difficulties, and faced its puzzles. He had even felt his feet
+wandering at the last from the path that led back to her, and now, with
+her lithe figure close held in his embrace, and her red-brown hair
+brushing his temples, he marveled how such an instant of doubt could
+have existed. He knew only that the silver of the moon and the kiss of
+the breeze and the clasp of her soft arms about his neck were all parts
+of one great miracle. And she, who had waited and almost despaired, not
+taking count of what she had suffered, felt her knees grow weak, and
+her head grow dizzy with sheer happiness, and wondered if it were not
+too marvelous to be true. And, looking very steadfastly into his eyes,
+she saw there the gleam that once had frightened her; the gleam that
+spoke of something stronger and more compelling than his love. It no
+longer frightened her, but made her soul sing, though it was more
+intense than it had ever been before, for now she knew that it was She
+herself who brought it to his pupils--and that nothing would ever be
+stronger.
+
+But they had much to say to each other, and, finally, Samson broke the
+silence:
+
+"Did ye think I wasn't a-comin' back, Sally?" he questioned, softly.
+At that moment, he had no realization that his tongue had ever
+fashioned smoother phrases. And she, too, who had been making war on
+crude idioms, forgot, as she answered:
+
+"Ye done said ye was comin'." Then, she added a happy lie: "I knowed
+plumb shore ye'd do hit."
+
+After a while, she drew away, and said, slowly:
+
+"Samson, I've done kept the old rifle-gun ready fer ye. Ye said ye'd
+need it bad when ye come back, an' I've took care of it."
+
+She stood there holding it, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper
+as she added:
+
+"It's been a lot of comfort to me sometimes, because it was your'n. I
+knew if ye stopped keerin' fer me, ye wouldn't let me keep it--an' as
+long as I had it, I--" She broke off, and the fingers of one hand
+touched the weapon caressingly.
+
+The man knew many things now that he had not known when he said good-
+by. He recognized in the very gesture with which she stroked the old
+walnut stock the pathetic heart-hunger of a nature which had been
+denied the fulfillment of its strength, and which had been bestowing on
+an inanimate object something that might almost have been the stirring
+of the mother instinct for a child. Now, thank God, her life should
+never lack anything that a flood-tide of love could bring to it. He
+bent his head in a mute sort of reverence.
+
+After a long while, they found time for the less-wonderful things.
+
+"I got your letter," he said, seriously, "and I came at once." As he
+began to speak of concrete facts, he dropped again into ordinary
+English, and did not know that he had changed his manner of speech.
+
+For an instant, Sally looked up into his face, then with a sudden
+laugh, she informed him:
+
+"I can say, 'isn't,' instead of, 'hain't,' too. How did you like my
+writing?"
+
+He held her off at arms' length, and looked at her pridefully, but
+under his gaze her eyes fell, and her face flushed with a sudden
+diffidence and a new shyness of realization. She wore a calico dress,
+but at her throat was a soft little bow of ribbon. She was no longer
+the totally unself-conscious wood-nymph, though as natural and
+instinctive as in the other days. Suddenly, she drew away from him a
+little, and her hands went slowly to her breast, and rested there. She
+was fronting a great crisis, but, in the first flush of joy, she had
+forgotten it. She had spent lonely nights struggling for rudiments; she
+had sought and fought to refashion herself, so that, if he came, he
+need not be ashamed of her. And now he had come, and, with a terrible
+clarity and distinctness, she realized how pitifully little she had
+been able to accomplish. Would she pass muster? She stood there before
+him, frightened, self-conscious and palpitating, then her voice came in
+a whisper:
+
+"Samson, dear, I'm not holdin' you to any promise. Those things we
+said were a long time back. Maybe we'd better forget 'em now, and begin
+all over again."
+
+But, again, he crushed her in his arms, and his voice rose triumphantly:
+
+"Sally, I have no promises to take back, and you have made none that
+I'm ever going to let you take back--not while life lasts!"
+
+Her laugh was the delicious music of happiness. "I don't want to take
+them back," she said. Then, suddenly, she added, importantly: "I wear
+shoes and stockings now, and I've been to school a little. I'm awfully--
+awfully ignorant, Samson, but I've started, and I reckon you can teach
+me."
+
+His voice choked. Then, her hands strayed up, and clasped themselves
+about his head.
+
+"Oh, Samson," she cried, as though someone had struck her, "you've cut
+yore ha'r."
+
+"It will grow again," he laughed. But he wished that he had not had to
+make that excuse. Then, being honest, he told her all about Adrienne
+Lescott--even about how, after he believed that he had been outcast by
+his uncle and herself, he had had his moments of doubt. Now that it was
+all so clear, now that there could never be doubt, he wanted the woman
+who had been so true a friend to know the girl whom he loved. He loved
+them both, but was in love with only one. He wanted to present to Sally
+the friend who had made him, and to the friend who had made him the
+Sally of whom he was proud. He wanted to tell Adrienne that now he
+could answer her question--that each of them meant to the other exactly
+the same thing: they were friends of the rarer sort, who had for a
+little time been in danger of mistaking their comradeship for passion.
+
+As they talked, sitting on the stile, Sally held the rifle across her
+knees. Except for their own voices and the soft chorus of night sounds,
+the hills were wrapped in silence--a silence as soft as velvet.
+Suddenly, in a pause, there came to the girl's ears the cracking of a
+twig in the woods. With the old instinctive training of the mountains,
+she leaped noiselessly down, and for an instant stood listening with
+intent ears. Then, in a low, tense whisper, as she thrust the gun into
+the man's hands, she cautioned:
+
+"Git out of sight. Maybe they've done found out ye've come back--maybe
+they're trailin' ye!"
+
+With an instant shock, she remembered what mission had brought him
+back, and what was his peril; and he, too, for whom the happiness of
+the moment had swallowed up other things, came back to a recognition of
+facts. Dropping into the old woodcraft, he melted out of sight into the
+shadow, thrusting the girl behind him, and crouched against the fence,
+throwing the rifle forward, and peering into the shadows. As he stood
+there, balancing the gun once more in his hands, old instincts began to
+stir, old battle hunger to rise, and old realizations of primitive
+things to assault him. Then, when they had waited with bated breath
+until they were both reassured, he rose and swung the stock to his
+shoulder several times. With something like a sigh of contentment, he
+said, half to himself:
+
+"Hit feels mighty natural ter throw this old rifle-gun up. I reckon
+maybe I kin still shoot hit."
+
+"I learned some things down there at school, Samson," said the girl,
+slowly, "and I wish--I wish you didn't have to use it."
+
+"Jim Asberry is dead," said the man, gravely.
+
+"Yes," she echoed, "Jim Asberry's dead." She stopped there. Yet, her
+sigh completed the sentence as though she had added, "but he was only
+one of several. Your vow went farther."
+
+After a moment's pause, Samson added:
+
+"Jesse Purvy's dead."
+
+The girl drew back, with a frightened gasp. She knew what this meant,
+or thought she did.
+
+"Jesse Purvy!" she repeated. "Oh, Samson, did ye--?" She broke off,
+and covered her face with her hands.
+
+"No, Sally," he told her. "I didn't have to." He recited the day's
+occurrences, and they sat together on the stile, until the moon had
+sunk to the ridge top.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Captain Sidney Callomb, who had been despatched in command of a
+militia company to quell the trouble in the mountains, should have been
+a soldier by profession. All his enthusiasms were martial. His
+precision was military. His cool eye held a note of command which made
+itself obeyed. He had a rare gift of handling men, which made them
+ready to execute the impossible. But the elder Callomb had trained his
+son to succeed him at the head of a railroad system, and the young man
+had philosophically undertaken to satisfy his military ambitions with
+State Guard shoulder-straps.
+
+The deepest sorrow and mortification he had ever known was that which
+came to him when Tamarack Spicer, his prisoner of war and a man who had
+been surrendered on the strength of his personal guarantee, had been
+assassinated before his eyes. That the manner of this killing had been
+so outrageously treacherous that it could hardly have been guarded
+against, failed to bring him solace. It had shown the inefficiency of
+his efforts, and had brought on a carnival of blood-letting, when he
+had come here to safeguard against that danger. In some fashion, he
+must make amends. He realized, too, and it rankled deeply, that his men
+were not being genuinely used to serve the State, but as instruments of
+the Hollmans, and he had seen enough to distrust the Hollmans. Here, in
+Hixon, he was seeing things from only one angle. He meant to learn
+something more impartial.
+
+Besides being on duty as an officer of militia, Callomb was a
+Kentuckian, interested in the problems of his Commonwealth, and, when
+he went back, he knew that his cousin, who occupied the executive
+mansion at Frankfort, would be interested in his suggestions. The
+Governor had asked him to report his impressions, and he meant to form
+them after analysis.
+
+So, smarting under his impotency, Captain Callomb came out of his tent
+one morning, and strolled across the curved bridge to the town proper.
+He knew that the Grand Jury was convening, and he meant to sit as a
+spectator in the court-house and study proceedings when they were
+instructed.
+
+But before he reached the court-house, where for a half-hour yet the
+cupola bell would not clang out its summons to veniremen and witnesses,
+he found fresh fuel for his wrath.
+
+He was not a popular man with these clansmen, though involuntarily he
+had been useful in leading their victims to the slaughter. There was a
+scowl in his eyes that they did not like, and an arrogant hint of iron
+laws in the livery he wore, which their instincts distrusted.
+
+Callomb saw without being told that over the town lay a sense of
+portentous tidings. Faces were more sullen than usual. Men fell into
+scowling knots and groups. A clerk at a store where he stopped for
+tobacco inquired as he made change:
+
+"Heered the news, stranger?"
+
+"What news?"
+
+"This here 'Wildcat' Samson South come back yis-tiddy, an' last
+evenin' towards sundown, Jesse Purvy an' Aaron Hollis was shot dead."
+
+For an instant, the soldier stood looking at the young clerk, his eyes
+kindling into a wrathful blaze. Then, he cursed under his breath. At
+the door, he turned on his heel:
+
+"Where can Judge Smithers be found at this time of day?" he demanded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+The Honorable Asa Smithers was not the regular Judge of the Circuit
+which numbered Hixon among its county-seats. The elected incumbent was
+ill, and Smithers had been named as his pro-tem. successor. Callomb
+climbed to the second story of the frame bank building, and pounded
+loudly on a door, which bore the boldly typed shingle:
+
+"ASA SMITHERS, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW."
+
+The temporary Judge admitted a visitor in uniform, whose countenance
+was stormy with indignant protest. The Judge himself was placid and
+smiling. The lawyer, who was for the time being exalted to the bench,
+hoped to ascend it more permanently by the votes of the Hollman
+faction, since only Hollman votes were counted. He was a young man of
+powerful physique with a face ruggedly strong and honest.
+
+It was such an honest and fearless face that it was extremely valuable
+to its owner in concealing a crookedness as resourceful as that of a
+fox, and a moral cowardice which made him a spineless tool in evil
+hands. A shock of tumbled red hair over a fighting face added to the
+appearance of combative strength. The Honorable Asa was conventionally
+dressed, and his linen was white, but his collar was innocent of a
+necktie. Callomb stood for a moment inside the door, and, when he
+spoke, it was to demand crisply:
+
+"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"About what, Captain?" inquired the other, mildly.
+
+"Is it possible you haven't heard? Since yesterday noon, two more
+murders have been added to the holocaust. You represent the courts of
+law. I represent the military arm of the State. Are we going to stand
+by and see this go on?"
+
+The Judge shook his head, and his visage was sternly thoughtful and
+hypocritical. He did not mention that he had just come from conference
+with the Hollman leaders. He did not explain that the venire he had
+drawn from the jury drum had borne a singularly solid Hollman compaction.
+
+"Until the Grand Jury acts, I don't see that we can take any steps."
+
+"And," stormed Captain Callomb, "the Grand Jury will, like former
+Grand Juries, lie down in terror and inactivity. Either there are no
+courageous men in your county, or these panels are selected to avoid
+including them."
+
+Judge Smithers' face darkened. If he was a moral coward, he was at
+least a coward crouching behind a seeming of fearlessness.
+
+"Captain," he said, coolly, but with a dangerous hint of warning, "I
+don't see that your duties include contempt of court."
+
+"No!" Callomb was now thoroughly angered, and his voice rose. "I am
+sent down here subject to your orders, and it seems you are also
+subject to orders. Here are two murders in a day, capping a climax of
+twenty years of bloodshed. You have information as to the arrival of a
+man known as a desperado with a grudge against the two dead men, yet
+you know of no steps to take. Give me the word, and I'll go out and
+bring that man, and any others you name, to your bar of justice--if it
+is a bar of justice! For God's sake, give me something else to do than
+to bring in prisoners to be shot down in cold blood."
+
+The Judge sat balancing a pencil on his extended forefinger as though
+it were a scale of justice.
+
+"You have been heated in your language, sir," he said, sternly, "but
+it is a heat arising from an indignation which I share. Consequently, I
+pass it over. I cannot instruct you to arrest Samson South before the
+Grand Jury has accused him. The law does not contemplate hasty or
+unadvised action. All men are innocent until proven guilty. If the
+Grand Jury wants South, I'll instruct you to go and get him. Until
+then, you may leave my part of the work to me."
+
+His Honor rose from his chair.
+
+"You can at least give this Grand Jury such instructions on murder as
+will point out their duty. You can assure them that the militia will
+protect them. Through your prosecutor, you can bring evidence to their
+attention, you----"
+
+"If you will excuse me," interrupted His Honor, drily, "I'll judge of
+how I am to charge my Grand Jury. I have been in communication with the
+family of Mr. Purvy, and it is not their wish at the present time to
+bring this case before the panel."
+
+Callomb laughed ironically.
+
+"No, I could have told you that before you conferred with them. I
+could have told you that they prefer to be their own courts and
+executioners, except where they need you. They also preferred to have
+me get a man they couldn't take themselves, and then to assassinate him
+in my hands. Who in the hell do you work for, Judge-for-the-moment
+Smithers? Are you holding a job under the State of Kentucky, or under
+the Hollman faction of this feud? I am instructed to take my orders
+from you. Will you kindly tell me my master's real name?"
+
+Smithers turned pale with anger, his fighting face grew as truculent
+as a bulldog's, while Callomb stood glaring back at him like a second
+bulldog, but the Judge knew that he was being honestly and fearlessly
+accused. He merely pointed to the door. The Captain turned on his heel,
+and stalked out of the place, and the Judge came down the steps, and
+crossed the street to the court-house. Five minutes later, he turned to
+the shirt-sleeved man who was leaning on the bench, and said in his
+most judicial voice:
+
+"Mr. Sheriff, open court."
+
+The next day the mail-carrier brought in a note for the temporary
+Judge. His Honor read it at recess, and hastened across to Hollman's
+Mammoth Department Store. There, in council with his masters, he asked
+instructions. This was the note:
+
+"THE HON. ASA SMITHERS.
+
+"SIR: I arrived in this county yesterday, and am prepared, if called
+as a witness, to give to the Grand Jury full and true particulars of
+the murder of Jesse Purvy and the killing of Aaron Hollis. I am willing
+to come under escort of my own kinsmen, or of the militiamen, as the
+Court may advise.
+
+"The requirement of any bodyguard, I deplore, but in meeting my legal
+obligations, I do not regard it as necessary or proper to walk into a
+trap.
+
+"Respectfully, SAMSON SOUTH."
+
+Smithers looked perplexedly at Judge Hollman.
+
+"Shall I have him come?" he inquired.
+
+Hollman threw the letter down on his desk with a burst of blasphemy:
+
+"Have him come?" he echoed. "Hell and damnation, no! What do we want
+him to come here and spill the milk for? When we get ready, we'll
+indict him. Then, let your damned soldiers go after him--as a criminal,
+not a witness. After that, we'll continue this case until these
+outsiders go away, and we can operate to suit ourselves. We don't fall
+for Samson South's tricks. No, sir; you never got that letter! It
+miscarried. Do you hear? You never got it."
+
+Smithers nodded grudging acquiescence. Most men would rather be
+independent officials than collar-wearers.
+
+Out on Misery Samson South had gladdened the soul of his uncle with
+his return. The old man was mending, and, for a long time, the two had
+talked. The failing head of the clan looked vainly for signs of
+degeneration in his nephew, and, failing to find them, was happy.
+
+"Hev ye decided, Samson," he inquired, "thet ye was right in yer
+notion 'bout goin' away?"
+
+Samson sat reflectively for a while, then replied:
+
+"We were both right, Uncle Spicer--and both wrong. This is my place,
+but if I'm to take up the leadership it must be in a different fashion.
+Changes are coming. We can't any longer stand still."
+
+Spicer South lighted his pipe. He, too, in these last years, had seen
+in the distance the crest of the oncoming wave. He, too, recognized
+that, from within or without, there must be a regeneration. He did not
+welcome it, but, if it must come, he preferred that it come not at the
+hands of conquerors, but under the leadership of his own blood.
+
+"I reckon there's right smart truth to that," he acknowledged. "I've
+been studyin' 'bout hit consid'able myself of late. Thar's been sev'ral
+fellers through the country talkin' coal an' timber an' railroads--an'
+sich like."
+
+Sally went to mill that Saturday, and with her rode Samson. There,
+besides Wile McCager, he met Caleb Wiley and several others. At first,
+they received him sceptically, but they knew of the visit to Purvy's
+store, and they were willing to admit that in part at least he had
+erased the blot from his escutcheon. Then, too, except for cropped hair
+and a white skin, he had come back as he had gone, in homespun and
+hickory. There was nothing highfalutin in his manners. In short, the
+impression was good.
+
+"I reckon now that ye're back, Samson," suggested McCager, "an' seein'
+how yore Uncle Spicer is gettin' along all right, I'll jest let the two
+of ye run things. I've done had enough." It was a simple fashion of
+resigning a regency, but effectual.
+
+Old Caleb, however, still insurgent and unconvinced, brought in a
+minority report.
+
+"We wants fightin' men," he grumbled, with the senile reiteration of
+his age, as he spat tobacco and beat a rat-tat on the mill floor with
+his long hickory staff. "We don't want no deserters."
+
+"Samson ain't a deserter," defended Sally. "There isn't one of you fit
+to tie his shoes." Sally and old Spicer South alone knew of her lover's
+letter to the Circuit Judge, and they were pledged to secrecy.
+
+"Never mind, Sally!" It was Samson himself who answered her. "I didn't
+come back because I care what men like old Caleb think. I came back
+because they needed me. The proof of a fighting man is his fighting, I
+reckon. I'm willing to let 'em judge me by what I'm going to do."
+
+So, Samson slipped back, tentatively, at least, into his place as clan
+head, though for a time he found it a post without action. After the
+fierce outburst of bloodshed, quiet had settled, and it was tacitly
+understood that, unless the Hollman forces had some coup in mind which
+they were secreting, this peace would last until the soldiers were
+withdrawn.
+
+"When the world's a-lookin'," commented Judge Hollman, "hit's a right
+good idea to crawl under a log--an' lay still."
+
+Purvy had been too famous a feudist to pass unsung. Reporters came as
+far as Hixon, gathered there such news as the Hollmans chose to give
+them, and went back to write lurid stories and description, from
+hearsay, of the stockaded seat of tragedy. Nor did they overlook the
+dramatic coincidence of the return of "Wildcat" Samson South from
+civilization to savagery. They made no accusation, but they pointed an
+inference and a moral--as they thought. It was a sermon on the triumph
+of heredity over the advantages of environment. Adrienne read some of
+these saffron misrepresentations, and they distressed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, it came insistently to the ears of Captain Callomb that
+some plan was on foot, the intricacies of which he could not fathom, to
+manufacture a case against a number of the Souths, quite apart from
+their actual guilt, or likelihood of guilt. Once more, he would be
+called upon to go out and drag in men too well fortified to be taken by
+the posses and deputies of the Hollman civil machinery. At this news,
+he chafed bitterly, and, still rankling with a sense of shame at the
+loss of his first prisoner, he formed a plan of his own, which he
+revealed over his pipe to his First Lieutenant.
+
+"There's a nigger in the woodpile, Merriwether," he said. "We are
+simply being used to do the dirty work up here, and I'm going to do a
+little probing of my own. I guess I'll turn the company over to you for
+a day or two."
+
+"What idiocy are you contemplating now?" inquired the second in command.
+
+"I'm going to ride over on Misery, and hear what the other side has to
+say. I've usually noticed that one side of any story is pretty good
+until the other's told."
+
+"You mean you are going to go over there where the Souths are
+intrenched, where every road is guarded?" The Lieutenant spoke
+wrathfully and with violence. "Don't be an ass, Callomb. You went over
+there once before, and took a man away--and he's dead. You owe them a
+life, and they collect their dues. You will be supported by no warrant
+of arrest, and can't take a sufficient detail to protect you."
+
+"No," said Callomb, quietly; "I go on my own responsibility and I go
+by myself."
+
+"And," stormed Merriwether, "you'll never come back."
+
+"I think," smiled Callomb, "I'll get back. I owe an old man over there
+an apology, and I want to see this desperado at first hand."
+
+"It's sheer madness. I ought to take you down to this infernal crook
+of a Judge, and have you committed to a strait-jacket."
+
+"If," said Callomb, "you are content to play the cats-paw to a bunch
+of assassins, I'm not. The mail-rider went out this morning, and he
+carried a letter to old Spicer South. I told him that I was coming
+unescorted and unarmed, and that my object was to talk with him. I
+asked him to give me a safe-conduct, at least until I reached his
+house, and stated my case. I treated him like an officer and a
+gentleman, and, unless I'm a poor judge of men, he's going to treat me
+that way."
+
+The Lieutenant sought vainly to dissuade Callomb, but the next day the
+Captain rode forth, unaccompanied. Curious stares followed him, and
+Judge Smithers turned narrowing and unpleasant eyes after him, but at
+the point where the ridge separated the territory of the Hollmans from
+that of the Souths, he saw waiting in the road a mounted figure,
+sitting his horse straight, and clad in the rough habiliments of the
+mountaineer.
+
+As Callomb rode up he saluted, and the mounted figure with perfect
+gravity and correctness returned that salute as one officer to another.
+The Captain was surprised. Where had this mountaineer with the steady
+eyes and the clean-cut jaw learned the niceties of military etiquette?
+
+"I am Captain Callomb of F Company," said the officer. "I'm riding
+over to Spicer South's house. Did you come to meet me?"
+
+"To meet and guide you," replied a pleasant voice. "My name is Samson
+South."
+
+The militiaman stared. This man whose countenance was calmly
+thoughtful scarcely comported with the descriptions he had heard of the
+"Wildcat of the Mountains"; the man who had come home straight as a
+storm-petrel at the first note of tempest, and marked his coming with
+double murder. Callomb had been too busy to read newspapers of late. He
+had heard only that Samson had "been away."
+
+While he wondered, Samson went on:
+
+"I'm glad you came. If it had been possible I would have come to you."
+As he told of the letter he had written the Judge, volunteering to
+present himself as a witness, the officer's wonder grew.
+
+"They said that you had been away," suggested Callomb. "If it's not an
+impertinent question, what part of the mountains have you been visiting?"
+
+Samson laughed.
+
+"Not any part of the mountains," he said. "I've been living chiefly in
+New York--and for a time in Paris."
+
+Callomb drew his horse to a dead halt.
+
+"In the name of God," he incredulously asked, "what manner of man are
+you?"
+
+"I hope," came the instant reply, "it may be summed up by saying that
+I'm exactly the opposite of the man you've had described for you back
+there at Hixon."
+
+"I knew it," exclaimed the soldier, "I knew that I was being fed on
+lies! That's why I came. I wanted to get the straight of it, and I felt
+that the solution lay over here."
+
+They rode the rest of the way in deep conversation. Samson outlined
+his ambitions for his people. He told, too, of the scene that had been
+enacted at Purvy's store. Callomb listened with absorption, feeling
+that the narrative bore axiomatic truth on its face.
+
+At last he inquired:
+
+"Did you succeed up there--as a painter?"
+
+"That's a long road," Samson told him, "but I think I had a fair
+start. I was getting commissions when I left."
+
+"Then, I am to understand"--the officer met the steady gray eyes and
+put the question like a cross-examiner bullying a witness--"I am to
+understand that you deliberately put behind you a career to come down
+here and herd these fence-jumping sheep?"
+
+"Hardly that," deprecated the head of the Souths. "They sent for me--
+that's all. Of course, I had to come."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they had sent. They are my people."
+
+The officer leaned in his saddle.
+
+"South," he said, "would you mind shaking hands with me? Some day, I
+want to brag about it to my grandchildren."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Callomb spent the night at the house of Spicer South. He met and
+talked with a number of the kinsmen, and, if he read in the eyes of
+some of them a smoldering and unforgiving remembrance of his unkept
+pledge, at least they repressed all expression of censure.
+
+With Spicer South and Samson, the Captain talked long into the night.
+He made many jottings in a notebook. He, with Samson abetting him,
+pointed out to the older and more stubborn man the necessity of a new
+regime in the mountains, under which the individual could walk in
+greater personal safety. As for the younger South, the officer felt,
+when he rode away the next morning, that he had discovered the one man
+who combined with the courage and honesty that many of his clansmen
+shared the mental equipment and local influence to prove a constructive
+leader.
+
+When he returned to the Bluegrass, he meant to have a long and
+unofficial talk with his relative, the Governor.
+
+He rode back to the ridge with a strong bodyguard. Upon this Samson
+had insisted. He had learned of Callomb's hasty and unwise denunciation
+of Smithers, and he knew that Smithers had lost no time in relating it
+to his masters. Callomb would be safe enough in Hollman country,
+because the faction which had called for troops could not afford to let
+him be killed within their own precincts. But, if Callomb could be shot
+down in his uniform, under circumstances which seemed to bear the
+earmarks of South authorship, it would arouse in the State at large a
+tidal wave of resentment against the Souths, which they could never
+hope to stem. And so, lest one of Hollman's hired assassins should
+succeed in slipping across the ridge and waylaying him, Samson
+conducted him to the frontier of the ridge.
+
+On reaching Hixon, Callomb apologized to Judge Smithers for his recent
+outburst of temper. Now that he understood the hand that gentleman was
+playing, he wished to be strategic and in a position of seeming accord.
+He must match craft against craft. He did not intimate that he knew of
+Samson's letter, and rather encouraged the idea that he had been
+received on Misery with surly and grudging hospitality.
+
+Smithers, presuming that the Souths still burned with anger over the
+shooting of Tamarack, swallowed that bait, and was beguiled.
+
+The Grand Jury trooped each day to the court-house and transacted its
+business. The petty juries went and came, occupied with several minor
+homicide cases. The Captain, from a chair, which Judge Smithers had
+ordered placed beside him on the bench, was looking on and intently
+studying. One morning, Smithers confided to him that in a day or two
+more the Grand Jury would bring in a true bill against Samson South,
+charging him with murder. The officer did not show surprise. He merely
+nodded.
+
+"I suppose I'll be called on to go and get him?" "I'm afraid we'll
+have to ask you to do that." "What caused the change of heart? I
+thought Purvy's people didn't want it done." It was Callomb's first
+allusion, except for his apology, to their former altercation.
+
+For an instant only, Smithers was a little confused.
+
+"To be quite frank with you, Callomb," he said, "I got to thinking
+over the matter in the light of your own viewpoint, and, after due
+deliberation, I came to see that to the State at large it might bear
+the same appearance. So, I had the Grand Jury take the matter up. We
+must stamp out such lawlessness as Samson South stands for. He is the
+more dangerous because he has brains."
+
+Callomb nodded, but, at noon, he slipped out on a pretense of sight-
+seeing, and rode by a somewhat circuitous route to the ridge. At
+nightfall, he came to the house of the clan head.
+
+"South," he said to Samson, when he had led him aside, "they didn't
+want to hear what you had to tell the Grand Jury, but they are going
+ahead to indict you on manufactured evidence."
+
+Samson was for a moment thoughtful, then he nodded.
+
+"That's about what I was expecting."
+
+"Now," went on Callomb, "we understand each other. We are working for
+the same end, and, by God! I've had one experience in making arrests at
+the order of that Court. I don't want it to happen again."
+
+"I suppose," said Samson, "you know that while I am entirely willing
+to face any fair court of justice, I don't propose to walk into a
+packed jury, whose only object is to get me where I can be made way
+with. Callomb, I hope we won't have to fight each other. What do you
+suggest?"
+
+"If the Court orders the militia to make an arrest, the militia has no
+option. In the long run, resistance would only alienate the sympathy of
+the world at large. There is just one thing to be done, South. It's a
+thing I don't like to suggest, and a thing which, if we were not
+fighting the devil with fire, it would be traitorous for me to
+suggest." He paused, then added emphatically: "When my detail arrives
+here, which will probably be in three or four days, you must not be
+here. You must not be in any place where we can find you."
+
+For a little while, Samson looked at the other man with a slow smile
+of amusement, but soon it died, and his face grew hard and determined.
+
+"I'm obliged to you, Callomb," he said, seriously. "It was more than I
+had the right to expect--this warning. I understand the cost of giving
+it. But it's no use. I can't cut and run. No, by God, you wouldn't do
+it! You can't ask me to do it."
+
+"By God, you can and will!" Callomb spoke with determination. "This
+isn't a time for quibbling. You've got work to do. We both have work to
+do. We can't stand on a matter of vainglorious pride, and let big
+issues of humanity go to pot. We haven't the right to spend men's lives
+in fighting each other, when we are the only two men in this
+entanglement who are in perfect accord--and honest."
+
+The mountaineer spent some minutes in silent self-debate. The working
+of his face under the play of alternating doubt, resolution, hatred and
+insurgency, told the militiaman what a struggle was progressing. At
+last, Samson's eyes cleared with an expression of discovered solution.
+
+"All right, Callomb," he said, briefly, "you won't find me!" He
+smiled, as he added: "Make as thorough a search as your duty demands.
+It needn't be perfunctory or superficial. Every South cabin will stand
+open to you. I shall be extremely busy, to ends which you will approve.
+I can't tell you what I shall be doing, because to do that, I should
+have to tell where I mean to be."
+
+In two days, the Grand Jury, with much secrecy, returned a true bill,
+and a day later a considerable detachment of infantry started on a
+dusty hike up Misery. Furtive and inscrutable Hollman eyes along the
+way watched them from cabin-doors, and counted them. They meant also to
+count them coming back, and they did not expect the totals to tally.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back of an iron spiked fence, and a dusty sunburned lawn, the barrack
+-like facades of the old Administration Building and Kentucky State
+Capitol frowned on the street and railroad track. About it, on two
+sides of the Kentucky River, sprawled the town of Frankfort; sleepy,
+more or less disheveled at the center, and stretching to shaded
+environs of Colonial houses set in lawns of rich bluegrass, amid the
+shade of forest trees. Circling the town in an embrace of quiet beauty
+rose the Kentucky River hills.
+
+Turning in to the gate of the State House enclosure, a man, who seemed
+to be an Easterner by the cut of his clothes, walked slowly up the
+brick walk, and passed around the fountain at the front of the Capitol.
+He smiled to himself as his wandering eyes caught the distant walls and
+roofs of the State Prison on the hillside. His steps carried him direct
+to the main entrance of the Administration Building, and, having paused
+a moment in the rotunda, he entered the Secretary's office of the
+Executive suite, and asked for an interview with the Governor. The
+Secretary, whose duties were in part playing Cerberus at that
+threshold, made his customary swift, though unobtrusive, survey of the
+applicant for audience, and saw nothing to excite suspicion.
+
+"Have you an appointment?" he asked.
+
+The visitor shook his head. Scribbling a brief note on a slip of
+paper, he enclosed it in an envelope and handed it to his questioner.
+
+"You must pardon my seeming mysteriousness," he said, "but, if you
+will let me send in that note, I think the Governor will see me."
+
+Once more the Secretary studied his man with a slightly puzzled air,
+then nodded and went through the door that gave admission to the
+Executive's office.
+
+His Excellency opened the envelope, and his face showed an expression
+of surprise. He raised his brows questioningly.
+
+"Rough-looking sort?" he inquired. "Mountaineer?"
+
+"No, sir. New Yorker would be my guess. Is there anything suspicious?"
+
+"I guess not." The Governor laughed. "Rather extraordinary note, but
+send him in."
+
+Through his eastern window, the Governor gazed off across the hills of
+South Frankfort, to the ribbon of river that came down from the
+troublesome hills. Then, hearing a movement at his back, he turned, and
+his eyes took in a well-dressed figure with confidence-inspiring
+features.
+
+He picked up the slip from his desk, and, for a moment, stood
+comparing the name and the message with the man who had sent them in.
+There seemed to be in his mind some irreconcilable contradiction
+between the two. With a slightly frowning seriousness, the Executive
+suggested:
+
+"This note says that you are Samson South, and that you want to see me
+with reference to a pardon. Whose pardon is it, Mr. South?"
+
+"My own, sir."
+
+The Governor raised his brows, slightly.
+
+"Your pardon for what? The newspapers do not even report that you have
+yet been indicted." He shaded the word "yet" with a slight emphasis.
+
+"I think I have been indicted within the past day or two. I'm not sure
+myself."
+
+The Governor continued to stare. The impression he had formed of the
+"Wildcat" from press dispatches was warring with the pleasing personal
+presence of this visitor. Then, his forehead wrinkled under his black
+hair, and his lips drew themselves sternly.
+
+"You have come to me too soon, sir," he said curtly. "The pardoning
+power is a thing to be most cautiously used at all times, and certainly
+never until the courts have acted. A case not yet adjudicated cannot
+address itself to executive clemency."
+
+Samson nodded.
+
+"Quite true," he admitted. "If I announced that I had come on the
+matter of a pardon, it was largely that I had to state some business
+and that seemed the briefest way of putting it."
+
+"Then, there is something else?"
+
+"Yes. If it were only a plea for clemency, I should expect the matter
+to be chiefly important to myself. In point of fact, I hope to make it
+equally interesting to you. Whether you give me a pardon in a fashion
+which violates all precedent, or whether I surrender myself, and go
+back to a trial which will be merely a form of assassination, rests
+entirely with you, sir. You will not find me insistent."
+
+"If," said the Governor, with a trace of warning in his voice, "your
+preamble is simply a device to pique my interest with its unheard-of
+novelty, I may as well confess that so far it has succeeded."
+
+"In that case, sir," responded Samson, gravely, "I have scored a
+point. If, when I am through, you find that I have been employing a
+subterfuge, I, fancy a touch of that bell under your finger will give
+you the means of summoning an officer. I am ready to turn myself over."
+
+Then, Samson launched into the story of his desires and the details of
+conditions which outside influences had been powerless to remedy--
+because they were outside influences. Some man of sufficient vigor and
+comprehension, acting from the center of disturbance, must be armed
+with the power to undertake the housecleaning, and for a while must do
+work that would not be pretty. As far as he was personally concerned, a
+pardon after trial would be a matter of purely academic interest. He
+could not expect to survive a trial. He was at present able to hold the
+Souths in leash. If the Governor was not of that mind, he was now ready
+to surrender himself, and permit matters to take their course.
+
+"And now, Mr. South?" suggested the Governor, after a half-hour of
+absorbed listening. "There is one point you have overlooked. Since in
+the end the whole thing comes back to the exercise of the pardoning
+power, it is after all the crux of the situation. You may be able to
+render such services as those for which you volunteer. Let us for the
+moment assume that to be true. You have not yet told me a very
+important thing. Did you or did you not kill Purvy and Hollis?"
+
+"I killed Hollis," said Samson, as though he were answering a question
+as to the time of day, "and I did not kill Purvy."
+
+"Kindly," suggested the Governor, "give me the full particulars of
+that affair."
+
+The two were still closeted, when a second visitor called, and was
+told that his Excellency could not be disturbed. The second visitor,
+however, was so insistent that the secretary finally consented to take
+in the card. After a glance at it, his chief ordered admission.
+
+The door opened, and Captain Callomb entered.
+
+He was now in civilian clothes, with portentous news written on his
+face. He paused in annoyance at the sight of a second figure standing
+with back turned at the window. Then Samson wheeled, and the two men
+recognized each other. They had met before only when one was in olive
+drab; the other in jeans and butternut. At recognition, Callomb's face
+fell, and grew troubled.
+
+"You here, South!" he exclaimed. "I thought you promised me that I
+shouldn't find you. God knows I didn't want to meet you."
+
+"Nor I you," Samson spoke slowly. "I supposed you'd be raking the
+hills."
+
+Neither of them was for the moment paying the least attention to the
+Governor, who stood quietly looking on.
+
+"I sent Merriwether out there," explained Callomb, impatiently. "I
+wanted to come here before it was too late. God knows, South, I
+wouldn't have had this meeting occur for anything under heaven. It
+leaves me no choice. You are indicted on two counts, each charging you
+with murder." The officer took a step toward the center of the room.
+His face was weary, and his eyes wore the deep disgust and fatigue that
+come from the necessity of performing a hard duty.
+
+"You are under arrest," he added quietly, but his composure broke as
+he stormed. "Now, by God, I've got to take you back and let them murder
+you, and you're the one man who might have been useful to the State."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+The Governor had been more influenced by watching the two as they
+talked than by what he had heard.
+
+"It seems to me, gentlemen," he suggested quietly, "that you are both
+overlooking my presence." He turned to Callomb.
+
+"Your coming, Sid, unless it was prearranged between the two of you
+(which, since I know you, I know was not the case) has shed more light
+on this matter than the testimony of a dozen witnesses. After all, I'm
+still the Governor."
+
+The militiaman seemed to have forgotten the existence of his
+distinguished kinsman, and, at the voice, his eyes came away from the
+face of the man he had not wanted to capture, and he shook his head.
+
+"You are merely the head of the executive branch," he said. "You are
+as helpless here as I am. Neither of us can interfere with the judicial
+gentry, though we may know that they stink to high heaven with the
+stench of blood. After a conviction, you can pardon, but a pardon won't
+help the dead. I don't see that you can do much of anything, Crit."
+
+"I don't know yet what I can do, but I can tell you I'm going to do
+something," said the Governor. "You can just begin watching me. In the
+meantime, I believe I am Commander-in-Chief of the State troops."
+
+"And I am Captain of F Company, but all I can do is to obey the orders
+of a bunch of Borgias."
+
+"As your superior officer," smiled the Governor, "I can give you
+orders. I'm going to give you one now. Mr. South has applied to me for
+a pardon in advance of trial. Technically, I have the power to grant
+that request. Morally, I doubt my right. Certainly, I shall not do it
+without a very thorough sifting of evidence and grave consideration of
+the necessities of the case--as well as the danger of the precedent.
+However, I am considering it, and for the present you will parole your
+prisoner in my custody. Mr. South, you will not leave Frankfort without
+my permission. You will take every precaution to conceal your actual
+identity. You will treat as utterly confidential all that has
+transpired here--and, above all, you will not let newspaper men
+discover you. Those are my orders. Report here tomorrow afternoon, and
+remember that you are my prisoner."
+
+Samson bowed, and left the two cousins together, where shortly they
+were joined by the Attorney General. That evening, the three dined at
+the executive mansion, and sat until midnight in the Governor's private
+office, still deep in discussion. During the long session, Callomb
+opened the bulky volume of the Kentucky Statutes, and laid his finger
+on Section 2673.
+
+"There's the rub," he protested, reading aloud: "'The military shall
+be at all times, and in all cases, in strict subordination to the civil
+power.'"
+
+The Governor glanced down to the next paragraph, and read in part:
+"'The Governor may direct the commanding officer of the military force
+to report to any one of the following-named officers of the district in
+which the said force is employed: Mayor of a city, sheriff, jailer or
+marshal.'"
+
+"Which list," stormed Callomb, "is the honor roll of the assassins."
+
+"At all events"--the Governor had derived from Callomb much
+information as to Samson South which the mountaineer himself had
+modestly withheld--"South gets his pardon. That is only a step. I wish
+I could make him satrap over his province, and provide him with troops
+to rule it. Unfortunately, our form of government has its drawbacks."
+
+"It might be possible," ventured the Attorney General, "to impeach the
+Sheriff, and appoint this or some other suitable man to fill the
+vacancy until the next election."
+
+"The Legislature doesn't meet until next winter," objected Callomb.
+"There is one chance. The Sheriff down there is a sick man. Let us hope
+he may die."
+
+One day, the Hixon conclave met in the room over Hollman's Mammoth
+Department Store, and with much profanity read a communication from
+Frankfort, announcing the pardon of Samson South. In that episode, they
+foresaw the beginning of the end for their dynasty. The outside world
+was looking on, and their regime could not survive the spotlight of law
+-loving scrutiny.
+
+"The fust thing," declared Judge Hollman, curtly, "is to get rid of
+these damned soldiers. We'll attend to our own business later, and we
+don't want them watchin' us. Just now, we want to lie mighty quiet for
+a spell--teetotally quiet until I pass the word."
+
+Samson had won back the confidence of his tribe, and enlisted the
+faith of the State administration. He had been authorized to organize a
+local militia company, and to drill them, provided he could stand
+answerable for their conduct. The younger Souths took gleefully to that
+idea. The mountain boy makes a good soldier, once he has grasped the
+idea of discipline. For ten weeks, they drilled daily in squads and
+weekly in platoons. Then, the fortuitous came to pass. Sheriff Forbin
+died, leaving behind him an unexpired term of two years, and Samson was
+summoned hastily to Frankfort. He returned, bearing his commission as
+High Sheriff, though, when that news reached Hixon, there were few men
+who envied him his post, and none who cared to bet that he would live
+to take his oath of office.
+
+That August court day was a memorable one in Hixon. Samson South was
+coming to town to take up his duties. Every one recognized it as the
+day of final issue, and one that could hardly pass without bloodshed.
+The Hollmans, standing in their last trench, saw only the blunt
+question of Hollman-South supremacy. For years, the feud had flared and
+slept and broken again into eruption, but never before had a South
+sought to throw his outposts of power across the waters of Crippleshin,
+and into the county seat. That the present South came bearing
+commission as an officer of the law only made his effrontery the more
+unendurable.
+
+Samson had not called for outside troops. The drilling and
+disciplining of his own company had progressed in silence along the
+waters of Misery. They were a slouching, unmilitary band of uniformed
+vagabonds, but they were longing to fight, and Callomb had been with
+them, tirelessly whipping them into rudimentary shape. After all, they
+were as much partisans as they had been before they were issued State
+rifles. The battle, if it came, would be as factional as the fight of
+twenty-five years ago, when the Hollmans held the store and the Souths
+the court-house. But back of all that lay one essential difference, and
+it was this difference that had urged the Governor to stretch the forms
+of law and put such dangerous power into the hands of one man. That
+difference was the man himself. He was to take drastic steps, but he
+was to take them under the forms of law, and the State Executive
+believed that, having gone through worse to better, he would maintain
+the improved condition.
+
+Early that morning, men began to assemble along the streets of Hixon;
+and to congregate into sullen clumps with set faces that denoted a
+grim, unsmiling determination. Not only the Hollmans from the town and
+immediate neighborhood were there, but their shaggier, fiercer brethren
+from remote creeks and coves, who came only at urgent call, and did not
+come without intent of vindicating their presence. Old Jake Hollman,
+from "over yon" on the headwaters of Dryhole Creek, brought his son and
+fourteen-year-old grandson, and all of them carried Winchesters. Long
+before the hour for the court-house bell to sound the call which would
+bring matters to a crisis, women disappeared from the streets, and
+front shutters and doors closed themselves. At last, the Souths began
+to ride in by half-dozens, and to hitch their horses at the racks.
+They, also, fell into groups well apart. The two factions eyed each
+other somberly, sometimes nodding or exchanging greetings, for the time
+had not yet come to fight. Slowly, however, the Hollmans began
+centering about the court-house. They swarmed in the yard, and entered
+the empty jail, and overran the halls and offices of the building
+itself. They took their places massed at the windows. The Souths, now
+coming in a solid stream, flowed with equal unanimity to McEwer's
+Hotel, near the square, and disappeared inside. Besides their rifles,
+they carried saddlebags, but not one of the uniforms which some of
+these bags contained, nor one of the cartridge belts, had yet been
+exposed to view.
+
+Stores opened, but only for a desultory pretense of business. Horsemen
+led their mounts away from the more public racks, and tethered them to
+back fences and willow branches in the shelter of the river banks,
+where stray bullets would not find them.
+
+The dawn that morning had still been gray when Samson South and
+Captain Callomb had passed the Miller cabin. Callomb had ridden slowly
+on around the turn of the road, and waited a quarter of a mile away. He
+was to command the militia that day, if the High Sheriff should call
+upon him. Samson went in and knocked, and instantly to the cabin door
+came Sally's slender, fluttering figure. She put both arms about him,
+and her eyes, as she looked into his face, were terrified, but tearless.
+
+"I'm frightened, Samson," she whispered. "God knows I'm going to be
+praying all this day."
+
+"Sally," he said, softly, "I'm coming back to you--but, if I don't"--
+he held her very close--"Uncle Spicer has my will. The farm is full of
+coal, and days are coming when roads will take it out, and every ridge
+will glow with coke furnaces. That farm will make you rich, if we win
+to-day's fight."
+
+"Don't!" she cried, with a sudden gasp. "Don't talk like that."
+
+"I must," he said, gently. "I want you to make me a promise, Sally."
+
+"It's made," she declared.
+
+"If, by any chance I should not come back, I want you to hold Uncle
+Spicer and old Wile McCager to their pledge. They must not privately
+avenge me. They must still stand for the law. I want you, and this is
+most important of all, to leave these mountains----"
+
+Her hands tightened on his shoulders.
+
+"Not that, Samson," she pleaded; "not these mountains where we've been
+together."
+
+"You promised. I want you to go to the Lescotts in New York. In a
+year, you can come back--if you want to; but you must promise that."
+
+"I promise," she reluctantly yielded.
+
+It was half-past nine o'clock when Samson South and Sidney Callomb
+rode side by side into Hixon from the east. A dozen of the older
+Souths, who had not become soldiers, met them there, and, with no word,
+separated to close about them in a circle of protection. As Callomb's
+eyes swept the almost deserted streets, so silent that the strident
+switching of a freight train could be heard down at the edge of town,
+he shook his head. As he met the sullen glances of the gathering in the
+court-house yard, he turned to Samson.
+
+"They'll fight," he said, briefly.
+
+Samson nodded.
+
+"I don't understand the method," demurred the officer, with
+perplexity. "Why don't they shoot you at once. What are they waiting
+for?"
+
+"They want to see," Samson assured him, "what tack I mean to take.
+They want to let the thing play itself out, They're inquisitive--and
+they're cautious, because now they are bucking the State and the world."
+
+Samson with his escort rode up to the court-house door, and
+dismounted. He was for the moment unarmed, and his men walked on each
+side of him, while the onlooking Hollmans stood back in surly silence
+to let him pass. In the office of the County Judge, Samson said briefly:
+
+"I want to get my deputies sworn in."
+
+"We've got plenty deputy sheriffs," was the quietly insolent rejoinder.
+
+"Not now--we haven't any." Samson's voice was sharply incisive. "I'll
+name my own assistants."
+
+"What's the matter with these boys?" The County Judge waved his hand
+toward two hold-over deputies.
+
+"They're fired."
+
+The County Judge laughed.
+
+"Well, I reckon I can't attend to that right now."
+
+"Then, you refuse?"
+
+"Mebby you might call it that."
+
+Samson leaned on the Judge's table, and rapped sharply with his
+knuckles. His handful of men stood close, and Callomb caught his
+breath, in the heavy air of storm-freighted suspense. The Hollman
+partisans filled the room, and others were crowding to the doors.
+
+"I'm High Sheriff of this County now," said Samson, sharply. "You are
+County Judge. Do we coöperate--or fight?"
+
+"I reckon," drawled the other, "that's a matter we'll work out as we
+goes along. Depends on how obedient ye air."
+
+"I'm responsible for the peace and quiet of this County," continued
+Samson. "We're going to have peace and quiet."
+
+The Judge looked about him. The indications did not appear to him
+indicative of peace and quiet.
+
+"Air we?" he inquired.
+
+"I'm coming back here in a half-hour," said the new Sheriff. "This is
+an unlawful and armed assembly. When I get back, I want to find the
+court-house occupied only by unarmed citizens who have business here."
+
+"When ye comes back," suggested the County Judge, "I'd advise that ye
+resigns yore job. A half-hour is about es long as ye ought ter try ter
+hold hit."
+
+Samson turned and walked through the scowling crowd to the court-house
+steps.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, in a clear, far-carrying voice, "there is no
+need of an armed congregation at this court-house. I call on you in the
+name of the law to lay aside your arms or scatter."
+
+There was murmur which for an instant threatened to become a roar, but
+trailed into a chorus of derisive laughter.
+
+Samson went to the hotel, accompanied by Callomb. A half-hour later,
+the two were back at the court-house, with a half-dozen companions. The
+yard was empty. Samson carried his father's rifle. In that half-hour a
+telegram, prepared in advance, had flashed to Frankfort.
+
+"Mob holds court-house--need troops."
+
+And a reply had flashed back:
+
+"Use local company--Callomb commanding." So that form of law was met.
+
+The court-house doors were closed, and its windows barricaded. The
+place was no longer a judicial building. It was a fortress. As Samson's
+party paused at the gate, a warning voice called:
+
+"Don't come no nigher!"
+
+The body-guard began dropping back to shelter.
+
+"I demand admission to the court-house to make arrests," shouted the
+new Sheriff. In answer, a spattering of rifle reports came from the
+jail windows. Two of the Souths fell. At a nod from Samson, Callomb
+left on a run for the hotel. The Sheriff himself took his position in a
+small store across the street, which he reached unhurt under a
+desultory fire.
+
+Then, again, silence settled on the town, to remain for five minutes
+unbroken. The sun glared mercilessly on clay streets, now as empty as a
+cemetery. A single horse incautiously hitched at the side of the
+courthouse switched its tail against the assaults of the flies.
+Otherwise, there was no outward sign of life. Then, Callomb's newly
+organized force of ragamuffin soldiers clattered down the street at
+double time. For a moment or two after they came into sight, only the
+massed uniforms caught the eyes of the intrenched Hollmans, and an
+alarmed murmur broke from the court-house. They had seen no troops
+detrain, or pitch camp. These men had sprung from the earth as
+startlingly as Jason's crop of dragon's teeth. But, when the command
+rounded the shoulder of a protecting wall to await further orders, the
+ragged stride of their marching, and the all-too-obvious bearing of the
+mountaineer proclaimed them native amateurs. The murmur turned to a
+howl of derision and challenge. They were nothing more nor less than
+South, masquerading in the uniforms of soldiers.
+
+"What orders?" inquired Callomb briefly, joining Samson in the store.
+
+"Demand surrender once more--then take the courthouse and jail," was
+the short reply.
+
+There was little conversation in the ranks of the new company, but
+their faces grew black as they listened to the jeers and insults across
+the way, and they greedily fingered their freshly issued rifles. They
+would be ready when the command of execution came. Callomb himself went
+forward with the flag of truce. He shouted his message, and a bearded
+man came to the court-house door.
+
+"Tell 'em," he said without redundancy, "thet we're all here. Come an'
+git us."
+
+The officer went back, and distributed his forces under such cover as
+offered itself, about the four walls. Then, a volley was fired over the
+roof, and instantly the two buildings in the public square awoke to a
+volcanic response of rifle fire.
+
+All day, the duel between the streets and county buildings went on
+with desultory intervals of quiet and wild outbursts of musketry. The
+troops were firing as sharpshooters, and the court-house, too, had its
+sharpshooters. When a head showed itself at a barricaded window, a
+report from the outside greeted it. Samson was everywhere, his rifle
+smoking and hot-barreled. His life seemed protected by a talisman. Yet,
+most of the firing, after the first hour, was from within. The troops
+were, except for occasional pot shots, holding their fire. There was
+neither food nor water inside the building, and at last night closed
+and the cordon drew tighter to prevent escape. The Hollmans, like rats
+in a trap, grimly held on, realizing that it was to be a siege. On the
+following morning, a detachment of F Company arrived, dragging two
+gatling guns. The Hollmans saw them detraining, from their lookout in
+the courthouse cupola, and, realizing that the end had come, resolved
+upon a desperate sortie. Simultaneously, every door and lower window of
+the court-house burst open to discharge a frenzied rush of men, firing
+as they came. They meant to eat their way out and leave as many hostile
+dead as possible in their wake. Their one chance now was to scatter
+before the machine-guns came into action. They came like a flood of
+human lava, and their guns were never silent, as they bore down on the
+barricades, where the single outnumbered company seemed insufficient to
+hold them. But the new militiamen, looking for reassurance not so much
+to Callomb as to the granite-like face of Samson South, rallied, and
+rose with a yell to meet them on bayonet and smoking muzzle. The rush
+wavered, fell back, desperately rallied, then broke in scattered
+remnants for the shelter of the building.
+
+Old Jake Hollman fell near the door, and his grandson, rushing out,
+picked up his fallen rifle, and sent farewell defiance from it, as he,
+too, threw up both arms and dropped.
+
+Then, a white flag wavered at a window, and, as the newly arrived
+troops halted in the street, the noise died suddenly to quiet. Samson
+went out to meet a man who opened the door, and said shortly:
+
+"We lays down."
+
+Judge Hollman, who had not participated, turned from the slit in his
+shuttered window, through which he had since the beginning been
+watching the conflict.
+
+"That ends it!" he said, with a despairing shrug of his shoulders. He
+picked up a magazine pistol which lay on his table, and, carefully
+counting down his chest to the fifth rib, placed the muzzle against his
+breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Before the mountain roads were mired with the coming of the rains, and
+while the air held its sparkle of autumnal zestfulness, Samson South
+wrote to Wilfred Horton that, if he still meant to come to the hills
+for his inspection of coal and timber, the time was ripe. Soon, men
+would appear bearing transit and chain, drawing a line which a railroad
+was to follow to Misery and across it to the heart of untouched forests
+and coal-fields. With that wave of innovation would come the
+speculators. Besides, Samson's fingers were itching to be out in the
+hills with a palette and a sheaf of brushes in the society of George
+Lescott.
+
+For a while after the battle at Hixon, the county had lain in a torpid
+paralysis of dread. Many illiterate feudists on each side remembered
+the directing and exposed figure of Samson South seen through eddies of
+gun smoke, and believed him immune from death. With Purvy dead and
+Hollman the victim of his own hand, the backbone of the murder
+syndicate was broken. Its heart had ceased to beat. Those Hollman
+survivors who bore the potentialities for leadership had not only
+signed pledges of peace, but were afraid to break them; and the
+triumphant Souths, instead of vaunting their victory, had subscribed to
+the doctrine of order, and declared the war over. Souths who broke the
+law were as speedily arrested as Hollmans. Their boys were drilling as
+militiamen, and--wonder of wonders!--inviting the sons of the enemy to
+join them. Of course, these things changed gradually, but the
+beginnings of them were most noticeable in the first few months, just
+as a newly painted and renovated house is more conspicuous than one
+that has been long respectable.
+
+Hollman's Mammoth Department Store passed into new hands, and
+trafficked only in merchandise, and the town was open to the men and
+women of Misery as well as those of Crippleshin.
+
+These things Samson had explained in his letters to the Lescotts and
+Horton. Men from down below could still find trouble in the wink of an
+eye, by seeking it, for under all transformation the nature of the
+individual remained much the same; but, without seeking to give
+offense, they could ride as securely through the hills as through the
+streets of a policed city--and meet a readier hospitality.
+
+And, when these things were discussed and the two men prepared to
+cross the Mason-and-Dixon line and visit the Cumberlands, Adrienne
+promptly and definitely announced that she would accompany her brother.
+No argument was effective to dissuade her, and after all Lescott, who
+had been there, saw no good reason why she should not go with him. He
+had brought Samson North. He had made a hazardous experiment which
+subsequent events had more than vindicated, and yet, in one respect, he
+feared that there had been failure. He had promised Sally that her
+lover would return to her with undeflected loyalty. Had he done so?
+Lescott had been glad that his sister should have undertaken the part
+of Samson's molding, which only a woman's hand could accomplish, and he
+had been glad of the strong friendship that had grown between them.
+But, if that friendship had come to mean something more sentimental,
+his experiment had been successful at the cost of unsuccess. He had
+said little, but watched much, and he had known that, after receiving a
+certain letter from Samson South, his sister had seemed strangely quiet
+and distressed. These four young persons had snarled their lives in
+perplexity. They could definitely find themselves and permanently
+adjust themselves, only by meeting on common ground. Perhaps, Samson
+had shone in an exaggerated high-light of fascination by the strong
+contrast into which New York had thrown him. Wilfred Horton had the
+right to be seen also in contrast with mountain life, and then only
+could the girl decide for all time and irrevocably. The painter learns
+something of confused values.
+
+Horton himself had seen small reason for a growth of hope in these
+months, but he, like Lescott, felt that the matter must come to issue,
+and he was not of that type which shrinks from putting to the touch a
+question of vital consequence. He knew that her happiness as well as
+his own was in the balance. He was not embittered or deluded, as a
+narrower man might have been, into the fallacy that her treatment of
+him denoted fickleness. Adrienne was merely running the boundary line
+that separates deep friendship from love, a boundary which is often
+confusing. When she had finally staked out the disputed frontier, it
+would never again be questioned. But on which side he would find
+himself, he did not know.
+
+At Hixon, they found that deceptive air of serenity which made the
+history of less than three months ago seem paradoxical and
+fantastically unreal. Only about the court-house square where numerous
+small holes in frame walls told of fusillades, and in the interior of
+the building itself where the woodwork was scarred and torn, and the
+plaster freshly patched, did they find grimly reminiscent evidence.
+
+Samson had not met them at the town, because he wished their first
+impressions of his people to reach them uninfluenced by his escort. It
+was a form of the mountain pride--an honest resolve to soften nothing,
+and make no apologies. But they found arrangements made for horses and
+saddlebags, and the girl discovered that for her had been provided a
+mount as evenly gaited as any in her own stables.
+
+When she and her two companions came out to the hotel porch to start,
+they found a guide waiting, who said he was instructed to take them as
+far as the ridge, where the Sheriff himself would be waiting, and the
+cavalcade struck into the hills. Men at whose houses they paused to ask
+a dipper of water, or to make an inquiry, gravely advised that they
+"had better light, and stay all night." In the coloring forests,
+squirrels scampered and scurried out of sight, and here and there on
+the tall slopes they saw shy-looking children regarding them with
+inquisitive eyes.
+
+The guide led them silently, gazing in frank amazement, though
+deferential politeness, at this girl in corduroys, who rode cross-
+saddle, and rode so well. Yet, it was evident that he would have
+preferred talking had not diffidence restrained him. He was a young man
+and rather handsome in a shaggy, unkempt way. Across one cheek ran a
+long scar still red, and the girl, looking into his clear, intelligent
+eyes, wondered what that scar stood for. Adrienne had the power of
+melting masculine diffidence, and her smile as she rode at his side,
+and asked, "What is your name?" brought an answering smile to his grim
+lips.
+
+"Joe Hollman, ma'am," he answered; and the girl gave an involuntary
+start. The two men who caught the name closed up the gap between the
+horses, with suddenly piqued interest.
+
+"Hollman!" exclaimed the girl. "Then, you--" She stopped and flushed.
+"I beg your pardon," she said, quickly.
+
+"That's all right," reassured the man. "I know what ye're a-thinkin',
+but I hain't takin' no offense. The High Sheriff sent me over. I'm one
+of his deputies."
+
+"Were you"--she paused, and added rather timidly--"were you in the
+court-house?"
+
+He nodded, and with a brown forefinger traced the scar on his cheek.
+
+"Samson South done that thar with his rifle-gun," he enlightened.
+"He's a funny sort of feller, is Samson South."
+
+"How?" she asked.
+
+"Wall, he licked us, an' he licked us so plumb damn hard we was
+skeered ter fight ag'in, an' then, 'stid of tramplin' on us, he turned
+right 'round, an' made me a deputy. My brother's a corporal in this
+hyar newfangled milishy. I reckon this time the peace is goin' ter
+last. Hit's a mighty funny way ter act, but 'pears like it works all
+right."
+
+Then, at the ridge, the girl's heart gave a sudden bound, for there at
+the highest point, where the road went up and dipped again, waited the
+mounted figure of Samson South, and, as they came into sight, he waved
+his felt hat, and rode down to meet them.
+
+"Greetings!" he shouted. Then, as he leaned over and took Adrienne's
+hand, he added: "The Goops send you their welcome." His smile was
+unchanged, but the girl noted that his hair had again grown long.
+
+Finally, as the sun was setting, they reached a roadside cabin, and
+the mountaineer said briefly to the other men:
+
+"You fellows ride on. I want Drennie to stop with me a moment. We'll
+join you later."
+
+Lescott nodded. He remembered the cabin of the Widow Miller, and
+Horton rode with him, albeit grudgingly.
+
+Adrienne sprang lightly to the ground, laughingly rejecting Samson's
+assistance, and came with him to the top of a stile, from which he
+pointed to the log cabin, set back in its small yard, wherein geese and
+chickens picked industriously about in the sandy earth.
+
+A huge poplar and a great oak nodded to each other at either side of
+the door, and over the walls a clambering profusion of honeysuckle vine
+contended with a mass of wild grape, in joint effort to hide the white
+chinking between the dark logs. From the crude milk-benches to the
+sweep of the well, every note was one of neatness and rustic charm.
+Slowly, he said, looking straight into her eyes:
+
+"This is Sally's cabin, Drennie."
+
+He watched her expression, and her lips curved up in the same
+sweetness of smile that had first captivated and helped to mold him.
+
+"It's lovely!" she cried, with frank delight. "It's a picture."
+
+"Wait!" he commanded. Then, turning toward the house, he sent out the
+long, peculiarly mournful call of the whippoorwill, and, at the signal,
+the door opened, and on the threshold Adrienne saw a slender figure.
+She had called the cabin with its shaded dooryard a picture, but now
+she knew she had been wrong. It was only a background. It was the girl
+herself who made and completed the picture. She stood there in the wild
+simplicity that artists seek vainly to reproduce in posed figures. Her
+red calico dress was patched, but fell in graceful lines to her slim
+bare ankles, though the first faint frosts had already fallen.
+
+Her red-brown hair hung loose and in masses about the oval of a face
+in which the half-parted lips were dashes of scarlet, and the eyes
+large violet pools. She stood with her little chin tilted in a half-
+wild attitude of reconnoiter, as a fawn might have stood. One brown arm
+and hand rested on the door frame, and, as she saw the other woman, she
+colored adorably.
+
+Adrienne thought she had never seen so instinctively and unaffectedly
+lovely a face or figure. Then the girl came down the steps and ran
+toward them.
+
+"Drennie," said the man, "this is Sally. I want you two to love each
+other." For an instant, Adrienne Lescott stood looking at the mountain
+girl, and then she opened both her arms.
+
+"Sally," she cried, "you adorable child, I do love you!"
+
+The girl in the calico dress raised her face, and her eyes were
+glistening.
+
+"I'm obleeged ter ye," she faltered. Then, with open and wondering
+admiration she stood gazing at the first "fine lady" upon whom her
+glance had ever fallen.
+
+Samson went over and took Sally's hand.
+
+"Drennie," he said, softly, "is there anything the matter with her?"
+
+Adrienne Lescott shook her head.
+
+"I understand," she said.
+
+"I sent the others on," he went on quietly, "because I wanted that
+first we three should meet alone. George and Wilfred are going to stop
+at my uncle's house, but, unless you'd rather have it otherwise, Sally
+wants you here."
+
+"Do I stop now?" the girl asked.
+
+But the man shook his head.
+
+"I want you to meet my other people first."
+
+As they rode at a walk along the little shred of road left to them,
+the man turned gravely.
+
+"Drennie," he began, "she waited for me, all those years. What I was
+helped to do by such splendid friends as you and your brother and
+Wilfred, she was back here trying to do for herself. I told you back
+there the night before I left that I was afraid to let myself question
+my feelings toward you. Do you remember?"
+
+She met his eyes, and her own eyes were frankly smiling.
+
+"You were very complimentary, Samson," she told him. "I warned you
+then that it was the moon talking."
+
+"No," he said firmly, "it was not the moon. I have since then met that
+fear, and analyzed it. My feeling for you is the best that a man can
+have, the honest worship of friendship. And," he added, "I have
+analyzed your feeling for me, too, and, thank God! I have that same
+friendship from you. Haven't I?"
+
+For a moment, she only nodded; but her eyes were bent on the road
+ahead of her. The man waited in tense silence. Then, she raised her
+face, and it was a face that smiled with the serenity of one who has
+wakened out of a troubled dream.
+
+"You will always have that, Samson, dear," she assured him.
+
+"Have I enough of it, to ask you to do for her what you did for me? To
+take her and teach her the things she has the right to know?"
+
+"I'd love it," she cried. And then she smiled, as she added: "She will
+be much easier to teach. She won't be so stupid, and one of the things
+I shall teach her"--she paused, and added whimsically--"will be to make
+you cut your hair again."
+
+But, just before they drew up at the house of old Spicer South, she
+said:
+
+"I might as well make a clean breast of it, Samson, and give my vanity
+the punishment it deserves. You had me in deep doubt."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About--well, about us. I wasn't quite sure that I wanted Sally to
+have you--that I didn't need you myself. I've been a shameful little
+cat to Wilfred."
+
+"But now--?" The Kentuckian broke off.
+
+"Now, I know that my friendship for you and my love for him have both
+had their acid test--and I am happier than I've ever been before. I'm
+glad we've been through it. There are no doubts ahead. I've got you
+both."
+
+"About him," said Samson, thoughtfully. "May I tell you something
+which, although it's a thing in your own heart, you have never quite
+known?"
+
+She nodded, and he went on.
+
+"The thing which you call fascination in me was really just a proxy,
+Drennie. You were liking qualities in me that were really his
+qualities. Just because you had known him only in gentle guise, his
+finish blinded you to his courage. Because he could turn 'to woman the
+heart of a woman,' you failed to see that under it was the 'iron and
+fire.' You thought you saw those qualities in me, because I wore my
+bark as shaggy as that scaling hickory over there. When he was getting
+anonymous threats of death every morning, he didn't mention them to
+you. He talked of teas and dances. I know his danger was real, because
+they tried to have me kill him--and if I'd been the man they took me
+for, I reckon I'd have done it. I was mad to my marrow that night--for
+a minute. I don't hold a brief for Wilfred, but I know that you liked
+me first for qualities which he has as strongly as I--and more
+strongly. He's a braver man than I, because, though raised to gentle
+things, when you ordered him into the fight, he was there. He never
+turned back, or flickered. I was raised on raw meat and gunpowder, but
+he went in without training."
+
+The girl's eyes grew grave and thoughtful, and for the rest of the way
+she rode in silence.
+
+There were transformations, too, in the house of Spicer South. Windows
+had been cut, and lamps adopted. It was no longer so crudely a pioneer
+abode. While they waited for dinner, a girl lightly crossed the stile,
+and came up to the house. Adrienne met her at the door, while Samson
+and Horton stood back, waiting. Suddenly, Miss Lescott halted and
+regarded the newcomer in surprise. It was the same girl she had seen,
+yet a different girl. Her hair no longer fell in tangled masses. Her
+feet were no longer bare. Her dress, though simple, was charming, and,
+when she spoke, her English had dropped its half-illiterate
+peculiarities, though the voice still held its bird-like melody.
+
+"Oh, Samson," cried Adrienne, "you two have been deceiving me! Sally,
+you were making up, dressing the part back there, and letting me
+patronize you."
+
+Sally's laughter broke from her throat in a musical peal, but it still
+held the note of shyness, and it was Samson who spoke.
+
+"I made the others ride on, and I got Sally to meet you just as she
+was when I left her to go East." He spoke with a touch of the
+mountaineer's over-sensitive pride. "I wanted you first to see my
+people, not as they are going to be, but as they were. I wanted you to
+know how proud I am of them--just that way."
+
+That evening, the four of them walked together over to the cabin of
+the Widow Miller. At the stile, Adrienne Lescott turned to the girl,
+and said:
+
+"I suppose this place is preempted. I'm going to take Wilfred down
+there by the creek, and leave you two alone."
+
+Sally protested with mountain hospitality, but even under the moon she
+once more colored adorably.
+
+Adrienne turned up the collar of her sweater around her throat, and,
+when she and the man who had waited, stood leaning on the rail of the
+footbridge, she laid a hand on his arm.
+
+"Has the water flowed by my mill, Wilfred?" she asked.
+
+"What do you mean?" His voice trembled.
+
+"Will you have anything to ask me when Christmas comes?"
+
+"If I can wait that long, Drennie," he told her.
+
+"Don't wait, dear," she suddenly exclaimed, turning toward him, and
+raising eyes that held his answer. "Ask me now!"
+
+But the question which he asked was one that his lips smothered as he
+pressed them against her own.
+
+Back where the poplar threw its sooty shadow on the road, two figures
+sat close together on the top of a stile, talking happily in whispers.
+A girl raised her face, and the moon shone on the deepness of her eyes,
+as her lips curved in a trembling smile.
+
+"You've come back, Samson," she said in a low voice, "but, if I'd
+known how lovely she was, I'd have given up hoping. I don't see what
+made you come."
+
+Her voice dropped again into the tender cadence of dialect.
+
+"I couldn't live withouten ye, Samson. I jest couldn't do hit." Would
+he remember when she had said that before?
+
+"I reckon, Sally," he promptly told her, "I couldn't live withouten
+_you,_ neither." Then, he added, fervently, "I'm plumb dead shore
+I couldn't."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Call of the Cumberlands
+by Charles Neville Buck
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS ***
+
+This file should be named 7776-8.txt or 7776-8.zip
+
+Produced by Avinash Kothare, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo,
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