The Call of the Cumberlands

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.