There was passing before his eyes as he stood there, pausing, a
panorama much vaster than any he had been able to conceive when last he
stood there. He was seeing in review the old life and the new, lurid
with contrasts, and, as the pictures of things thousands of miles away
rose before his eyes as clearly as the serried backbone of the ridges,
he was comparing and settling for all time the actual values and
proportions of the things in his life.
He saw the streets of Paris and New York, brilliant under their
strings of opalescent lights; the Champs Elysées ran in its
smooth, tree-trimmed parquetry from the Place de Concorde to the
Arc de Triomphe, and the chatter and music of its cafés rang in
his ears. The ivory spaces of Rome, from the Pincian Hill where his
fancy saw almond trees in bloom to the Piazza Venezia, spread
their eternal story before his imagination. He saw 'buses and hansoms
slirring through the mud and fog of London and the endless pot-
pourri of Manhattan. All the things that the outside world had to
offer; all that had ever stirred his pulses to a worship of the
beautiful, the harmonious, the excellent, rose in exact value. Then, he
saw again the sunrise as it would be to-morrow morning over these
ragged hills. He saw the mists rise and grow wisp-like, and the disc of
the sun gain color, and all the miracles of cannoning tempest and
caressing calm--and, though he had come back to fight, a wonderful
peace settled over him, for he knew that, if he must choose these, his
native hills, or all the rest, he would forego all the rest.
And Sally--would she be changed? His heart was hammering wildly now.
Sally had remained loyal. It was a miracle, but it was the one thing
that counted. He was going to her, and nothing else mattered. All the
questions of dilemma were answered. He was Samson South come back to
his own--to Sally, and the rifle. Nothing had changed! The same trees
raised the same crests against the same sky. For every one of them, he
felt a throb of deep emotion. Best of all, he himself had not changed
in any cardinal respect, though he had come through changes and
perplexities.
He lifted his head, and sent out a long, clear whippoorwill call,
which quavered on the night much like the other calls in the black
hills around him. After a moment, he went nearer, in the shadow of a
poplar, and repeated the call.
Then, the cabin-door opened. Its jamb framed a patch of yellow
candlelight, and, at the center, a slender silhouetted figure, in a
fluttering, eager attitude of uncertainty. The figure turned slightly
to one side, and, as it did so, the man saw clasped in her right hand
the rifle, which had been his mission, bequeathed to her in trust. He
saw, too, the delicate outline of her profile, with anxiously parted
lips and a red halo about her soft hair. He watched the eager heave of
her breast, and the spasmodic clutching of the gun to her heart. For
four years, he had not given that familiar signal. Possibly, it had
lost some of its characteristic quality, for she still seemed in doubt.
She hesitated, and the man, invisible in the shadow, once more imitated
the bird-note, but this time it was so low and soft that it seemed the
voice of a whispering whippoorwill.