The Call of the Cumberlands

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.