The Call of the Cumberlands

"There's my hand on it, Drennie," he said. "We start back to New York

to-morrow, don't we? Well, when I get there, I put on overalls, and go

to work. When I propose next, I'll have something to show."

A motor-boat had seen their plight, and was racing madly to their

rescue, with a yard-high swirl of water thrown up from its nose and a

fusillade of explosions trailing in its wake.

* * * * * Christmas came to Misery wrapped in a drab mantle of desolation. The

mountains were like gigantic cones of raw and sticky chocolate, except

where the snow lay patched upon their cheerless slopes. The skies were

low and leaden, and across their gray stretches a spirit of squalid

melancholy rode with the tarnished sun. Windowless cabins, with tight-

closed doors, became cavernous dens untouched by the cleansing power of

daylight. In their vitiated atmosphere, their humanity grew stolidly

sullen. Nowhere was a hint of the season's cheer. The mountains knew

only of such celebration as snuggling close to the jug of moonshine,

and drinking out the day. Mountain children, who had never heard of

Kris Kingle, knew of an ancient tradition that at Christmas midnight

the cattle in the barns and fields knelt down, as they had knelt around

the manger, and that along the ragged slopes of the hills the elder

bushes ceased to rattle dead stalks, and burst into white sprays of

momentary bloom.

Christmas itself was a week distant, and, at the cabin of the Widow

Miller, Sally was sitting alone before the logs. She laid down the

slate and spelling-book, over which her forehead had been strenuously

puckered, and gazed somewhat mournfully into the blaze. Sally had a

secret. It was a secret which she based on a faint hope. If Samson

should come back to Misery, he would come back full of new notions. No

man had ever yet returned from that outside world unaltered. No man

ever would. A terrible premonition said he would not come at all, but,

if he did--if he did--she must know how to read and write. Maybe, when

she had learned a little more, she might even go to school for a term

or two. She had not confided her secret. The widow would not have

understood. The book and slate came out of their dusty cranny in the

logs beside the fireplace only when the widow had withdrawn to her bed,

and the freckled boy was dreaming of being old enough to kill Hollmans.

The cramped and distorted chirography on the slate was discouraging.

It was all proving very hard work. The girl gazed for a time at

something she saw in the embers, and then a faint smile came to her

lips. By next Christmas, she would surprise Samson with a letter. It

should be well written, and every "hain't" should be an "isn't." Of

course, until then Samson would not write to her, because he would not

know that she could read the letter--indeed, as yet the deciphering of

"hand-write" was beyond her abilities.