Dusk was falling, when he hitched his horse in a clump of timber, and,
lifting his saddlebags, began climbing to a cabin that sat far back in
a thicketed cove. He was now well within South territory, and the need
of masquerade had ended.
The cabin had not, for years, been occupied. Its rooftree was leaning
askew under rotting shingles. The doorstep was ivy-covered, and the
stones of the hearth were broken. But it lay well hidden, and would
serve his purposes.
Shortly, a candle flickered inside, before a small hand mirror.
Scissors and safety razor were for a while busy. The man who entered in
impeccable clothes emerged fifteen minutes later--transformed. There
appeared under the rising June crescent, a smooth-faced native, clad in
stained store-clothes, with rough woolen socks showing at his brogan
tops, and a battered felt hat drawn over his face. No one who had known
the Samson South of four years ago would fail to recognize him now. And
the strangest part, he told himself, was that he felt the old Samson.
He no longer doubted his courage. He had come home, and his conscience
was once more clear.
The mountain roads and the mountain sides themselves were sweetly
silent. Moon mist engulfed the flats in a lake of dreams, and, as the
livery-stable horse halted to pant at the top of the final ridge, he
could see below him his destination.
The smaller knobs rose like little islands out of the vapor, and
yonder, catching the moonlight like scraps of gray paper, were two
roofs: that of his uncle's house--and that of the Widow Miller.
At a point where a hand-bridge crossed the skirting creek, the boy
dismounted. Ahead of him lay the stile where he had said good-by to
Sally. The place was dark, and the chimney smokeless, but, as he came
nearer, holding the shadows of the trees, he saw one sliver of light at
the bottom of a solid shutter; the shutter of Sally's room. Yet, for a
while, Samson stopped there, looking and making no sound. He stood at
his Rubicon--and behind him lay all the glitter and culture of that
other world, a world that had been good to him.
That was to Samson South one of those pregnant and portentous moments
with which life sometimes punctuates its turning points. At such times,
all the set and solidified strata that go into the building of a man's
nature may be uptossed and rearranged. So, the layers of a mountain
chain and a continent that have for centuries remained steadfast may
break and alter under the stirring of earthquake or volcano, dropping
heights under water and throwing new ranges above the sea.