Even the tuneful glory of the burgundy and scarlet mountains hurt her into wincing--for was it not the clarion of Beauty that Samson had heard--and in answer to which he had left her? So, she would sit, and let her eyes wander, and try to imagine the sort of picture those same very hungry eyes would see, could she rip away the curtain of purple distance, and look in on him--wherever he was. And, in imagining such a picture, she was hampered by no actual knowledge of the world in which he lived--it was all a fairy-tale world, one which her imagination shaped and colored fantastically. Then, she would take out one of his occasional letters, and her face would grow somewhat rapt, as she spelled out the familiar, "I love you," which was to her the soul of the message. The rest was unimportant. 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?"