The Call of the Cumberlands

But they had much to say to each other, and, finally, Samson broke the

silence: "Did ye think I wasn't a-comin' back, Sally?" he questioned, softly.

At that moment, he had no realization that his tongue had ever

fashioned smoother phrases. And she, too, who had been making war on

crude idioms, forgot, as she answered: "Ye done said ye was comin'." Then, she added a happy lie: "I knowed

plumb shore ye'd do hit."

After a while, she drew away, and said, slowly: "Samson, I've done kept the old rifle-gun ready fer ye. Ye said ye'd

need it bad when ye come back, an' I've took care of it."

She stood there holding it, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper

as she added: "It's been a lot of comfort to me sometimes, because it was your'n. I

knew if ye stopped keerin' fer me, ye wouldn't let me keep it--an' as

long as I had it, I--" She broke off, and the fingers of one hand

touched the weapon caressingly.

The man knew many things now that he had not known when he said good-

by. He recognized in the very gesture with which she stroked the old

walnut stock the pathetic heart-hunger of a nature which had been

denied the fulfillment of its strength, and which had been bestowing on

an inanimate object something that might almost have been the stirring

of the mother instinct for a child. Now, thank God, her life should

never lack anything that a flood-tide of love could bring to it. He

bent his head in a mute sort of reverence.

After a long while, they found time for the less-wonderful things.

"I got your letter," he said, seriously, "and I came at once." As he

began to speak of concrete facts, he dropped again into ordinary

English, and did not know that he had changed his manner of speech.

For an instant, Sally looked up into his face, then with a sudden

laugh, she informed him: "I can say, 'isn't,' instead of, 'hain't,' too. How did you like my

writing?"

He held her off at arms' length, and looked at her pridefully, but

under his gaze her eyes fell, and her face flushed with a sudden

diffidence and a new shyness of realization. She wore a calico dress,

but at her throat was a soft little bow of ribbon. She was no longer

the totally unself-conscious wood-nymph, though as natural and

instinctive as in the other days. Suddenly, she drew away from him a

little, and her hands went slowly to her breast, and rested there. She

was fronting a great crisis, but, in the first flush of joy, she had

forgotten it. She had spent lonely nights struggling for rudiments; she

had sought and fought to refashion herself, so that, if he came, he

need not be ashamed of her. And now he had come, and, with a terrible

clarity and distinctness, she realized how pitifully little she had

been able to accomplish. Would she pass muster? She stood there before

him, frightened, self-conscious and palpitating, then her voice came in

a whisper: "Samson, dear, I'm not holdin' you to any promise. Those things we

said were a long time back. Maybe we'd better forget 'em now, and begin

all over again."