The Call of the Cumberlands

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.