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logs beside the fireplace only when the widow had withdrawn to her bed,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