CHAPTER X
Yet, when Samson that evening gave his whippoorwill call at the Widow Miller's cabin, he found a dejected and miserable girl sitting on the stile, with her chin propped in her two hands and her eyes full of somberness and foreboding.
"What's the matter, Sally?" questioned he, anxiously. "Hes that low-down Tamarack Spicer been round here tellin' ye some more stories ter pester ye?"
She shook her head in silence. Usually, she bore the brunt of their conversations, Samson merely agreeing with, or overruling, her in lordly brevities. The boy climbed up and sat beside her.
"Thar's a-goin' ter be a dancin' party over ter Wile McCager's mill come Saturday," he insinuatingly suggested. "I reckon ye'll go over thar with me, won't ye, Sally?"
He waited for her usual delighted assent, but Sally only told him absently and without enthusiasm that she would "study about it." At last, however, her restraint broke, and, looking up, she abruptly demanded:
"Air ye a-goin' away, Samson?"
"Who's been a-talkin' ter ye?" demanded the boy, angrily.
For a moment, the girl sat silent. Silver mists were softening under a rising moon. The katydids were prophesying with strident music the six weeks' warning of frost. Myriads of stars were soft and low-hanging. Finally, she spoke in a grave voice:
"Hit hain't nothin' ter git mad about, Samson. The artist man 'lowed as how ye had a right ter go down thar, an' git an eddication." She made a weary gesture toward the great beyond.