The Call of the Cumberlands

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.