The Call of the Cumberlands

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.