There was no color for that on the palette, and he turned to the paint- box.
"Here," suggested Lescott, handing him a tube of Payne's Gray: "is that what you're looking for?"
Samson read the label, and decisively shook his head.
"I'm a-goin' atter them hills," he declared. "There hain't no gray in them thar mountings."
"Squeeze some out, anyway." The artist suited the action to the word, and soon Samson was experimenting with a mixture.
"Why, that hain't no gray," he announced, with enthusiasm; "that thar's sort of ashy purple." Still, he was not satisfied. His first brush-stroke showed a trifle dead and heavy. It lacked the soft lucid quality that the hills held, though it was close enough to truth to have satisfied any eye save one of uncompromising sincerity. Samson, even though he was hopelessly daubing, and knew it, was sincere, and the painter at his elbow caught his breath, and looked on with the absorption of a prophet, who, listening to childish prattle, yet recognizes the gift of prophecy. The boy dabbled for a perplexed moment among the pigments, then lightened up his color with a trace of ultramarine. Unconsciously, the master heaved a sigh of satisfaction. The boy "laid in" his far hills, and turned.
"Thet's the way hit looks ter me," he said, simply.
"That's the way it is," commended his critic.
For a while more, Samson worked at the nearer hills, then he rose.
"I'm done," he said. "I hain't a-goin' ter fool with them thar trees an' things. I don't know nothing erbout thet. I can't paint leaves an' twigs an' birdsnests. What I likes is mountings, an' skies, an' sech- like things."