The Call of the Cumberlands

Lescott whistled, and then his face lighted into contentment.

"To-day, Samson," he announced, "Lescott, South and Company get busy."

It was the first time he had seen Samson smile, and, although the

expression was one of sheer delight, inherent somberness loaned it a

touch of the wistful.

When, an hour later, the two set out, the mountain boy carried the

paraphernalia, and the old man standing at the door watched them off

with a half-quizzical, half-disapproving glance. To interfere with any

act of courtesy to a guest was not to be thought of, but already the

influence on Samson of this man from the other world was disquieting

his uncle's thoughts. With his mother's milk, the boy had fed on hatred

of his enemies. With his training, he had been reared to feudal

animosities. Disaffection might ruin his usefulness. Besides the

sketching outfit, Samson carried his rifle. He led the painter by slow

stages, since the climb proved hard for a man still somewhat enfeebled,

to the high rock which Sally visited each morning.

As the boy, with remarkable aptitude, learned how to adjust the easel

and arrange the paraphernalia, Lescott sat drinking in through thirsty

eyes the stretch of landscape he had determined to paint.

It was his custom to look long and studiously through closed lashes

before he took up his brush. After that he began laying in his key

tones and his fundamental sketching with an incredible swiftness,

having already solved his problems of composition and analysis.

Then, while he painted, the boy held the palette, his eyes riveted on

the canvas, which was growing from a blank to a mirror of vistas--and

the boy's pupils became deeply hungry. He was not only looking. He was

seeing. His gaze took in the way the fingers held the brushes; the

manner of mixing the pigments, the detail of method. Sometimes, when he

saw a brush dab into a color whose use he did not at once understand,

he would catch his breath anxiously, then nod silently to himself as

the blending vindicated the choice. He did not know it, but his eye for

color was as instinctively true as that of the master.

As the day wore on, they fell to talking, and the boy again found

himself speaking of his fettered restiveness in the confinement of his

life; of the wanderlust which stirred him, and of which he had been

taught to feel ashamed.

During one of their periods of rest, there was a rustle in the

branches of a hickory, and a gray shape flirted a bushy tail. Samson's

hand slipped silently out, and the rifle came to his shoulder. In a

moment it snapped, and a squirrel dropped through the leaves.