The Call of the Cumberlands

"Ef somebody was ter ask ye ter describe the shape of a rainstorm,

what would ye say?" countered the boy.

Lescott laughed.

"I guess I wouldn't try to say."

"I reckon," replied the mountaineer, "I won't try, neither."

"Do you find it anything like the thing expected?" No New Yorker can

allow a stranger to be unimpressed with that sky-line.

"I didn't have no notion what to expect." Samson's voice was matter-of-

fact. "I 'lowed I'd jest wait and see."

He followed Lescott out to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and

stepped with him into the tonneau of the painter's waiting car. Lescott

lived with his family up-town, for it happened that, had his canvases

possessed no value whatever, he would still have been in a position to

drive his motor, and follow his impulses about the world. Lescott

himself had found it necessary to overcome family opposition when he

had determined to follow the career of painting. His people had been in

finance, and they had expected him to take the position to which he

logically fell heir in activities that center about Wall Street. He,

too, had at first been regarded as recreant to traditions. For that

reason, he felt a full sympathy with Samson. The painter's place in the

social world--although he preferred his other world of Art--was so

secure that he was free from any petty embarrassment in standing

sponsor for a wild man from the hills. If he did not take the boy to

his home, it was because he understood that a life which must be not

only full of early embarrassment, but positively revolutionary, should

be approached by easy stages. Consequently, the car turned down Fifth

Avenue, passed under the arch, and drew up before a door just off

Washington Square, where the landscape painter had a studio suite.

There were sleeping-rooms and such accessories as seemed to the boy

unheard-of luxury, though Lescott regarded the place as a makeshift

annex to his home establishment.

"You'd better take your time in selecting permanent quarters," was his

careless fashion of explaining to Samson. "It's just as well not to

hurry. You are to stay here with me, as long as you will."

"I'm obleeged ter ye," replied the boy, to whose training in open-

doored hospitality the invitation seemed only natural. The evening meal

was brought in from a neighboring hotel, and the two men dined before

an open fire, Samson eating in mountain silence, while his host chatted

and asked questions. The place was quiet for New York, but to Samson it

seemed an insufferable pandemonium. He found himself longing for the

velvet-soft quiet of the nightfalls he had known.