The Huttig news., 1914-12-19
CHAPTER W.

George Leseott had known hospital ity of many brands and degrees He had been the lioniZed celebrity n places of fashion. He had been the guest of equally famous brother artists in the cities of two hemispheree, and, since sincere painting had been iis pole star. he had gone where his arts wanderlHst baekened. He had fol- owed the lure Of transitory beauty to remote sections Of the world. Tho present trip was only one Of many like it, which had brought him into touch with varying peoples and dis- tinctive Sypes of life. He told tiiEi self that never had he found men at eEee so crude and so courteous as these hosts who facing personal p9fiis had still time and willingness to regard his comfort.
 The coming of the kineman, w.o would stay untI the present daager passed had filled the house. Tne four beds in the cabin proper were fuil. and some slept on floor mattresses. Lescott, because guest and wounded, was given a small room aside Sam- son, however shared his quarfe-s in order to perform any service snat sn injured man might require 1t had been full and unusual day 10, the painter and it's incidents crowded in on him in retrospect and drove of the possibility Of sleep. Samson, too, seemed wakeful, and in the isolatiea of the dark room the two men fell into conversation which almost lasted ogt the night Samson went into the con fessional. This was the first human being he had ever met to whom he could unburden his soul
 The thirst to taste what knoaledge lay beyond the hills; the unnamed wanderlust that had at times brought him a restiveness so poignant ag to be agenizing; the undefined at-uning of his heart to the beauty ot six, aue hill; these matters he had hitherto kept locked in guilty silence.
 In cove or lowland pocket, stretch i, ing into the mountain side, lax the small and meager farm of the Widow Miller. The Widow Miller was a South" that is to say, she Tell. by tie of marriage. under the protection of the clan head She lived alo-lo with . her fourteen-year-old son and her six teen-year-old daughter. The daughter was Sally.
 The sun rose on the morning alter Lescott arrived. the mists lifted. an, the cabin of the Widow Miller stood revealed A tousle-headed boy made his way to the barn to feed the c.ltt.e, and red patch of color, as bright and tuneful as a Kentucky cardinal. appeared at the door between tho morning-glory vines. The red patch of color was Sally.
 She made her way, carrying bucket, to the spring, where she sneit down and gazed at her own image in the water
 Before going home she set down her bucket by the stream, and, with quick glance toward the house to make sure that she was not observed climbed through the brush and wac lost to view She followed path that her own feet had made, and after steep course upward came upon a bald face of rock, which stood out storm battered where rift went througl the backbone of the ridge. This roin of vantage commanded the other val ley. Down below, across the treetops. were a root and q chimney from which a thread of smoke rose in an attenu- ated shaft. That was Spicer South $ house and Samson's hcme. The girl leaned against the gnafled bowl of the white oak and waved toward the roof and chimney. She cupped her hands and raised them to her lips like one who means to shout across a great dis. tance, then she whispered so low that only she herself conld hear:
 Hello, Samson South!"
 She stood for a space looking down, and forgot to laugh, while her eyes grew religiously and softly deep then, turning, she ran down the slope. She had performed her morning devotions.
 That day at the house of Spicer South was an off day. The kinsmen who had stopped for the night stayed on through the morning. Nothing was said of the possibility of trouble. The men talked crops and tossed horse. shoes in the yard; but no one went to work iii the fields, and all remained within easy call. Only young Tama- rack Spicer, a raw-boned nephew, wore a sulien face and made great show of cleaning his rife and pistol.
 Shortly after dinner he disappeared, and when the afternoon was we'll ad vanced Samson, too. with his rife on his arm, strolled toward the stile.
 He sauntered down the road, but, when he had passed out of vision, he turned sharply into the woods, and began climbing. His steps carried him to the rift in the ridge where the white oak stood sentinel over the watch tower of rock. As he came over the