At last, Spicer South's sister, a woman who looked older than himself, though she was really younger, appeared, smoking a clay pipe, which she waved toward the kitchen. "You men kin come in an' eat," she announced; and the mountaineers, knocking the ashes from their pipes, trailed into the kitchen. The place was lit by the fire in a cavernous hearth where the cooking was still going forward with skillet and crane. The food, coarse and greasy, but not unwholesome, was set on a long table covered with oilcloth. The roughly clad men sat down with a scraping of chair legs, and attacked their provender in businesslike silence. The corners of the room fell into obscurity. Shadows wavered against the sooty rafters, and, before the meal ended, Samson returned and dropped without comment into his chair. Afterward, the men trooped taciturnly out again, and resumed their pipes. A whippoorwill sent his mournful cry across the tree-tops, and was answered. Frogs added the booming of their tireless throats. A young moon slipped across an eastern mountain, and livened the creek into a soft shimmer wherein long shadows quavered. The more distant line of mountains showed in a mist of silver, and the nearer heights in blue -gray silhouette. A wizardry of night and softness settled like a benediction, and from the dark door of the house stole the quaint folklore cadence of a rudely thrummed banjo. Lescott strolled over to the stile with every artist instinct stirred. This nocturne of silver and gray and blue at once soothed and intoxicated his imagination. His fingers were itching for a brush. Then, he heard a movement at his shoulder, and, turning, saw the boy Samson with the moonlight in his eyes, and, besides the moonlight, that sparkle which is the essence of the dreamer's vision. Once more, their glances met and flashed a countersign. "Hit hain't got many colors in hit," said the boy, slowly, indicating with a sweep of his hand the symphony about them, "but somehow what there is is jest about the right ones. Hit whispers ter a feller, the same as a mammy whispers ter her baby." He paused, then eagerly asked: "Stranger, kin you look at the sky an' the mountings an' hear 'em singin'--with yore eyes?" The painter felt a thrill of astonishment. It seemed incredible that the boy, whose rude descriptives reflected such poetry of feeling, could be one with the savage young animal who had, two hours before, raised his hand heavenward, and reiterated his oath to do murder in payment of murder. "Yes," was his slow reply, "every painter must do that. Music and color are two expressions of the same thing--and the thing is Beauty." The mountain boy made no reply, but his eyes dwelt on the quivering shadows in the water; and Lescott asked cautiously, fearing to wake him from the dreamer to the savage: "So you are interested in skies and hills and their beauties, too, are you?" Samson's laugh was half-ashamed, half-defiant.