Slowly he struggled to his knees. He staggered up the side of the slope as best he might, more by chance than otherwise, taking that side which lay nearest the dance house. He saw in the gloom the low boulders, behind which his fighting men had lain. He stumbled across the dead body of Calvin Trasker, left where he had fallen. There remained to him sensibility enough to put the dead man’s hat across his face; but he could do no more than that. He knew that if he were found here he would be killed indeed. So, knowing that there was no longer need for him or chance for him here, he staggered on down the ravine of Semmes’ Cove, until at length he could go no farther, and so fell once more unconscious.
When again he awoke it was broad sunshine. How long he had lain he could not tell. But now thirst assailed him, thirst which he might quench in the trickle of water which lay below. The provender of the woods, a few nuts, a pawpaw or so, seemed grateful to him now. He staggered on, knowing that it would be no more than two or three miles down the ravine until he came to the little camp he had made in the rain, after he had left his own home on that unhappy day. And so at length he found that bivouac and dropped into the bed of rotten wood once more, and lay prostrate all that day and the next.
It was really upon the morning of the fourth day after the encounter—although Joslin himself could not have said as to that—that, strong enough now to walk, he staggered out of the thicket-covered lower entrance of Semmes’ Cove into the little creek bed, which made the path to his father’s home. He must look once more at the house where he himself was born.
Was born, did he say? No, he had been born a second time! In these long hours of misery and pain, David Joslin had taken accounting as best he might with life and the philosophies thereof. In his fashion of thought, he had gained the conviction that his “call” had come to him. He was called for a different life. There was no doubt about it. New duties lay before him—all of a new life—because he had been born again! To him his salvation was not less than a miracle, and he accepted it as such solemnly and reverently, feeling himself now consecrated fully for some cause. What the form of that consecration might be he himself did not clearly know as yet.
But there came to him, with this feeling, the solemn conviction that he must leave this country. This opportunity seemed to him providential. No, he would not even go to say farewell to his wife, nor to greet his grandma, Granny Joslin, to give counsel to her. He, being dead, must depart secretly forever from these hills until he might return to them to do the thing given him to do.
Such, unnatural and hard as that might seem to others, was the ancient, grim, uncompromising creed of David Joslin of the Cumberlands. Let the dead bury its dead. Let the living live their own lives.
Weakly, slowly, he climbed along the mountain side above the creek bed, to avoid any passerby, and so at length reached the point upon the opposing hill whence he might look down upon the little home once owned by the man who lay there now, under the drying yellow ridge in the apple orchard planted by his sires.
How long David Joslin sat here, his chin in his hands, he himself might not have told. He sat looking down, pondering, resolving.... Yes, he was born again! What must he do?
At length he rose, staggeringly rose, seeking about for some broken branch to aid him further in his journey. For now he purposed a long, long journey out from these hills. He was going away from his own people!
His hand fell against something hard in the side pocket of his ragged coat. It was the old book he had borrowed of his father—the well-thumbed volume of Calvin’s Institutes. His belt and revolver were gone—he knew not where—but here was this ancient, iron book. He recalled now, with the tenacious memory of the mountaineer, a passage which he had read therein: