He did not answer her, did not bend in token of greeting to the other woman who sat sullenly silent. He took his own place at the fireside—the chief’s place of counsel in a cabin home. It once had been his own fireside. He was a stranger here to-day.
He stared silently at the ashes after the fashion of the mountaineers, who mostly do so because they have few thoughts. But David Joslin had many thoughts now, riotous thoughts, that left his mind a scene of combat.
This squalid interior, the unmade bed, the grimy pillow coverings, the table littered with the dishes of the earlier meal, the entire lack of neatness, cleanliness and order that left the place a hovel, and not a home—all this was as when he had left the place. There arose for him the comparison of this with the sweet quiet of other homes.
He had the feeling that gaunt fingers were reaching out to claim him once more. These who sat here—they were flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. They were his people. He was of them. What, then, was his duty? And why could he not set out of his mind the comparison that urged in upon him—of these with others whom he had seen in a wider and lovelier world than this? These were ignorant as once he had been—caught in the shallows of life, victims of dwarfing poverty all their days.
Of these two was one whom David Joslin had sworn to love, honor and cherish, cleaving to none other. He had lived after the fashion of his people. Corn bread and hog meat; pot hooks and the early bed for the woman, crops and the occasional “frolic” for the man—that was the life all of them had known. This might have been any home; this woman, any wife of these hills. But other pictures rose before him—before David Joslin, a man with a conscience and a will to do the right.
Joslin shifted in his chair, but there was no greeting in his gaze. He did not reach out his hand to touch that of his wife—indeed, he never would have done that in the presence of another, for that would have been in violation of the creed of the hills.
“Well, Meliss’,” said he at last, “I’ve come back.”
“I see ye hev,” said she. “Hit’s nigh about time ye did.”
“That may be. At least I’m here.”