She had never before seen a picture more worthy than the chromos of advertising calendars and the few crude prints that find their way into the roughest places, and she was a passionate, though totally unconscious, devotée of beauty. Now she was sitting before a sketch, its paint still moist, which more severe critics would have pronounced worthy of accolade. Of course, it was not a finished picture--merely a study of what lay before her--but the hand that had placed these brushstrokes on the academy board was the sure, deft hand of a master of landscape, who had caught the splendid spirit of the thing, and fixed it immutably in true and glowing appreciation. Who he was; where he had gone; why his work stood there unfinished and abandoned, were details which for the moment this half-savage child-woman forgot to question. She was conscious only of a sense of revelation and awe. Then she saw other boards, like the one upon the easel, piled near the paint -box. These were dry, and represented the work of other days; but they were all pictures of her own mountains, and in each of them, as in this one, was something that made her heart leap. To her own people, these steep hillsides and "coves" and valleys were a matter of course. In their stony soil, they labored by day: and in their shadows slept when work was done. Yet, someone had discovered that they held a picturesque and rugged beauty; that they were not merely steep fields where the plough was useless and the hoe must be used. She must tell Samson: Samson, whom she held in an artless exaltation of hero-worship; Samson, who was so "smart" that he thought about things beyond her understanding; Samson, who could not only read and write, but speculate on problematical matters. Suddenly she came to her feet with a swift-darting impulse of alarm. Her ear had caught a sound. She cast searching glances about her, but the tangle was empty of humanity. The water still murmured over the rocks undisturbed. There was no sign of human presence, other than herself, that her eyes could discover--and yet to her ears came the sound again, and this time more distinctly. It was the sound of a man's voice, and it was moaning as if in pain. She rose and searched vainly through the bushes of the hillside where the rock ran out from the woods. She lifted her skirts and splashed her bare feet in the shallow creek water, wading persistently up and down. Her shyness was forgotten. The groan was a groan of a human creature in distress, and she must find and succor the person from whom it came. Certain sounds are baffling as to direction. A voice from overhead or broken by echoing obstacles does not readily betray its source. Finally she stood up and listened once more intently--her attitude full of tense earnestness.