Slowly, with incredible toil, the unskilled hands of these unpaid laborers advanced the task which they had set for themselves. Still the building extended itself against the skyline. About the bottom of the walls now slowly arose the covering of rough-hewn boards, so that it was more apparent what the finished structure would be, if ever it might be finished. The hill folk marveled at the vast size of this building, wondering at Davy Joslin when he told them there were yet larger in the world outside.
Joslin worked steadily with the others, growing gaunter and gaunter as the weeks passed. A faint line of gray had come at his temples, though he yet was young. He had driven body and mind alike without mercy these last years.
None the less, in these surroundings so familiar, among these friends so simple and sincere in their confidence, the soul of the man, so long sad and dour, began to thaw, to show itself beneath the wintry aspect of a nature wholly absorbed in a compelling purpose. To his lips came now more often the light jest, the grim quip, the merry retort, which once had marked him as a younger man. Day by day, not unsettling himself in the new respect in which they held him for his wider experience, he grew into, or fell back into, the old ways of the earlier days.
At times when the work was done for the day and dusk had fallen, they would light a lamp in one of the more sheltered rooms of the unfinished building, and Joslin would read to them for an hour or so, explaining to them what he had read, telling them of the greater world of thought and activity in affairs, which lay beyond their knowledge, and thus proving to them all the better the need of this work in which they were engaged. No Homer of old was ever more a god to his listeners than David Joslin here in the rude structure of his unfinished building.
Again, a yet lighter side of the nature of the mountain man would manifest itself—few, indeed, were more human than himself at heart. With a wide smile, upon occasion, he might call a halt in the labors for a time, and, taking from under a board the new violin, which represented his sole acquisition in the outer world from which he now had exiled himself in turn, he would motion to them to clear a space upon the floor, and fall to dancing for his playing. For the time, the natural fervor of the mountain soul would forget itself in the ancient relaxation of their kind, and men and women, or even children, would follow the measure of his bow. He played with a certain native skill, if with unfinished art, but knowing well the power of music as incentive and as stimulus. These matters now strengthened him in the regard of his fellows, so that he became a leader indeed, not of one clan, but of many, of all. His word was law to them now. Had he cared to preach, he could, indeed, have stood before them now, and swayed them with his words. But David Joslin did not preach.
It was thus that the city grew, and thus that the feuds passed, no man might say when. There had come from among the people, as always there does come in time of need, a man who had learned and lived, had joyed and sorrowed with them, and who, therefore, was fit to lead them, and to speak with the tongue of law and of prophecy. Alone, Joslin was wide-eyed and sorrowing, as any man must be who carries burdens other than his own. Unconsciously, he was learning the great truth that human sympathy is the only foundation for human leadership.
“Fer a man who kin read the way he kin, four syllerbles and all, Davy hain’t stuck up none at all,” said old Absalom Gannt. “No, I reckon he’s all right. He hain’t changed a bit inside.”
“He kin play the fiddle yit, too,” assented Chan Bullock. “I dunno as old Levi Gaines kin play ‘Turkey in the Straw’ any better than what Davy does, an’ Levi’s been allowed to be e’en about the best fiddler in these parts fer nigh on to forty year.”
“That’s a heap older than Davy is, no matter how he looks,” said Absalom. “I re-colleck when he was borned all right, an’ he hain’t thirty yit. I’ll say he’s a right servigerous man, young as he is.”