Yet, when Samson that evening gave his whippoorwill call at the Widow

Miller's cabin, he found a dejected and miserable girl sitting on the

stile, with her chin propped in her two hands and her eyes full of

somberness and foreboding.

"What's the matter, Sally?" questioned he, anxiously. "Hes that low-down

Tamarack Spicer been round here tellin' ye some more stories ter pester

ye?"

She shook her head in silence. Usually, she bore the brunt of their

conversations, Samson merely agreeing with, or overruling, her in

lordly brevities. The boy climbed up and sat beside her.

"Thar's a-goin' ter be a dancin' party over ter Wile McCager's mill

come Saturday," he insinuatingly suggested. "I reckon ye'll go over

thar with me, won't ye, Sally?"

He waited for her usual delighted assent, but Sally only told him

absently and without enthusiasm that she would "study about it." At

last, however, her restraint broke, and, looking up, she abruptly

demanded: "Air ye a-goin' away, Samson?"

"Who's been a-talkin' ter ye?" demanded the boy, angrily.

For a moment, the girl sat silent. Silver mists were softening under a

rising moon. The katydids were prophesying with strident music the six

weeks' warning of frost. Myriads of stars were soft and low-hanging.

Finally, she spoke in a grave voice: "Hit hain't nothin' ter git mad about, Samson. The artist man 'lowed

as how ye had a right ter go down thar, an' git an eddication." She

made a weary gesture toward the great beyond.

"He hadn't ought to of told ye, Sally. If I'd been plumb sartin in my

mind, I'd a-told ye myself--not but what I knows," he hastily amended,

"thet he meant hit friendly."

"Air ye a-goin'?"

"I'm studyin' about hit."

He awaited objection, but none came. Then, with a piquing of his

masculine vanity, he demanded: "Hain't ye a-keerin', Sally, whether I goes, or not?"

The girl grew rigid. Her fingers on the crumbling plank of the stile's

top tightened and gripped hard. The moonlit landscape seemed to whirl

in a dizzy circle. Her face did not betray her, nor her voice, though

she had to gulp down a rising lump in her throat before she could

answer calmly.

"I thinks ye had ought ter go, Samson."

The boy was astonished. He had avoided the subject for fear of her

opposition--and tears.

Then, slowly, she went on as though repeating a lesson painstakingly

conned: "There hain't nothin' in these here hills fer ye, Samson. Down thar,

ye'll see lots of things thet's new--an' civilized an' beautiful! Ye'll

see lots of gals thet kin read an' write, gals dressed up in all kinds

of fancy fixin's." Her glib words ran out and ended in a sort of inward

gasp.




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