study of what lay before her--but the hand that had placed these
brushstrokes on the academy board was the sure, deft hand of a master
of landscape, who had caught the splendid spirit of the thing, and
fixed it immutably in true and glowing appreciation. Who he was; where
he had gone; why his work stood there unfinished and abandoned, were
details which for the moment this half-savage child-woman forgot to
question. She was conscious only of a sense of revelation and awe. Then
she saw other boards, like the one upon the easel, piled near the paint
-box. These were dry, and represented the work of other days; but they
were all pictures of her own mountains, and in each of them, as in this
one, was something that made her heart leap.

To her own people, these steep hillsides and "coves" and valleys were
a matter of course. In their stony soil, they labored by day: and in
their shadows slept when work was done. Yet, someone had discovered
that they held a picturesque and rugged beauty; that they were not
merely steep fields where the plough was useless and the hoe must be
used. She must tell Samson: Samson, whom she held in an artless
exaltation of hero-worship; Samson, who was so "smart" that he thought
about things beyond her understanding; Samson, who could not only read
and write, but speculate on problematical matters.

Suddenly she came to her feet with a swift-darting impulse of alarm.
Her ear had caught a sound. She cast searching glances about her, but
the tangle was empty of humanity. The water still murmured over the
rocks undisturbed. There was no sign of human presence, other than
herself, that her eyes could discover--and yet to her ears came the
sound again, and this time more distinctly. It was the sound of a man's
voice, and it was moaning as if in pain. She rose and searched vainly
through the bushes of the hillside where the rock ran out from the