"No, thank you kindly. Sis' Roxy," Lance refused his sister's invitation when she would have forced him and Callista into places at the table. "We'll be movin' along home." His tones dwelt fondly on the word. "Neither Callista nor me is rightly hungry yet; we'll take our first meal at our own place to-day."
It was bare branches they rode under going home to the cabin in the Gap; but the sap had started at the roots. Winter had done his worst; his bolt was sped; Spring was on the way.
Fire was kindled once more on the cold hearth, a splendid banner of flame wrapping the hickory logs, and Lance sat before it with his son on his knees, warming the small rosy feet chilled from the long ride. For a moment he caught and held both restless, dimpled little members in one sinewy brown hand, marveling at them, thrilling to the touch of their velvet softness.
Outside, a cardinal's note came persistently from the stream's 397 edge, a gallant call. High over the Cumberlands arched the blue, dappled with white cloud. It was a rarely beautiful day, such as nearly every February brings a few of in that region. On every rocky hillside farm of the mountain country harness and implements were being dragged forth and inspected against the beginning of the year's work. Winter's prisoners were everywhere rejoicing in the prospect of release. Doors were left open; girls called from outside announcing finds of early blossoms; the piping voices of children at play came shrill and keen on the cool, sunlit air.
Within Callista's dusk kitchen, the firelight set moving ruddy shine and shadow on the brown walls. Midway one of these she had hung up the banjo, having carried it home across her shoulders. Its sheepskin round showed a misty moon within the gleam of metal band where the blaze struck out a sparkling crescent to rim one side. It made no question now of "How many miles, how many years?" for the answer was come. Later Lance would take it down and string it afresh, and the little feet that kicked their pink heels against his knee, their fat toes curling ecstatically in the heat of the fire, would dance to its strumming. Even Callista would learn the delight of measuring her step by its music. But now it was mute. There was no need of its voice in the harmony that was here. And when Callista, in the pauses of 398 her homely task of dinner making, knelt beside the pair at the fire and encircled them both with her arms, Lance knew that he had at last brought home his own to his island. An island! It stretched away before the eye of his spirit, a continent, a world, a universe! The confines of that airy domain where he had dwelt alone and uncompanioned, were suddenly wide enough to take in all mankind, though they held just now only the trinity of home—father, mother, and child.