The Call of the Cumberlands

"Don't ye say hit!" The defiance in her voice was being pathetically

tangled up with the tears. She was speaking in a transport of grief.

"Don't ye say hit. Take anybody else--take 'em all down thar, but leave

us Samson. We needs him hyar. We've jest got ter have Samson hyar."

She faced him still with quivering lips, but in another moment, with a

sudden sob, she dropped to the rock, and buried her face in her crossed

arms. Her slender body shook under a harrowing convulsion of

unhappiness. Lescott felt as though he had struck her; as though he had

ruthlessly blighted the irresponsible joyousness which had a few

minutes before sung from her lips with the blitheness of a mocking-

bird. He went over and softly laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Miss Sally--" he began.

She suddenly turned on him a tear-stained, infuriated face, stormy

with blazing eyes and wet cheeks and trembling lips.

"Don't touch me," she cried; "don't ye dare ter touch me! I hain't

nothin' but a gal--but I reckon I could 'most tear ye ter pieces. Ye're

jest a pizen snake, anyhow!" Then, she pointed a tremulous finger off

up the road. "Git away from hyar," she commanded. "I don't never want

ter see ye again. Ye're tryin' ter steal everything I loves. Git away,

I tells ye!--git away--begone!"

"Think it over," urged Lescott, quietly. "See if your heart doesn't

say I am Samson's friend--and yours." He turned, and began making his

way over the rocks; but, before he had gone far, he sat down to reflect

upon the situation. Certainly, he was not augmenting his popularity. A

half-hour later, he heard a rustle, and, turning, saw Sally standing

not far off. She was hesitating at the edge of the underbrush, and

Lescott read in her eyes the effort it was costing her to come forward

and apologize. Her cheeks were still pale and her eyes wet, but the

tempest of her anger had spent itself, and in the girl who stood

penitently, one hand nervously clutching a branch of rhododendron, one

foot twisting in the moss, Lescott was seeing an altogether new Sally.

There was a renunciation in her eyes that in contrast with the child-

like curve of her lips, and slim girlishness of her figure, seemed

entirely pathetic.

As she stood there, trying to come forward with a pitiful effort at

composure and a twisted smile, Lescott wanted to go and meet her. But

he knew her shyness, and realized that the kindest thing would be to

pretend that he had not seen her at all. So, he covertly watched her,

while he assumed to sit in moody unconsciousness of her nearness.