She would not be able to write
that Christmas. letter. There had been too many interruptions in the
self-imparted education, but some day she would write. There would
probably be time enough. It would take even Samson a long while to
become an artist. He had said so, and the morbid mountain pride forbade
that she should write at all until she could do it well enough to give
him a complete surprise. It must be a finished article, that letter--or
nothing at all!
One day, as she was walking homeward from her lonely trysting place,
she met the battered-looking man who carried medicines in his
saddlebags and the Scriptures in his pocket, and who practised both
forms of healing through the hills. The old man drew down his nag, and
threw one leg over the pommel.
"Evenin', Sally," he greeted.
"Evenin', Brother Spencer. How air ye?"
"Tol'able, thank ye, Sally." The body-and-soul mender studied the girl
awhile in silence, and then said bluntly: "Ye've done broke right smart, in the last year. Anything the matter
with ye?"
She shook her head, and laughed. It was an effort to laugh merrily,
but only the ghost of the old instinctive blitheness rippled into it.
"I've jest come from old Spicer South's," volunteered the doctor.
"He's ailin' pretty consid'able, these days."
"What's the matter with Unc' Spicer?" demanded the girl, in genuine
anxiety. Every one along Misery called the old man Unc' Spicer.
"I can't jest make out." Her informer spoke slowly, and his brow
corrugated into something like sullenness. "He hain't jest to say sick.
Thet is, his organs seems all right, but he don't 'pear to have no
heart fer nothin', and his victuals don't tempt him none. He's jest
puny, thet's all."
"I'll go over thar, an' see him," announced the girl. "I'll cook a
chicken thet'll tempt him."
The physician's mind was working along some line which did not seem to
partake of cheerfulness. Again, he studied the girl, still upright and
high-chinned, but, somehow, no longer effervescent with wild, resilient
strength.
"Hit sometimes 'pears to me," he said, gruffly, "thet this here thing
of eddication costs a sight more than hit comes to."
"What d'ye mean, Brother Spencer?"
"I reckon if Samson South hadn't a-took this hyar hankerin' atter
larnin', an' had stayed home 'stid of rainbow chasin', the old man would
still be able-bodied, 'stid of dyin' of a broken heart--an' you----"
The girl's cheeks flushed. Her violet eyes became deep with a loyal
and defensive glow.