THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS



from her lips. She star-d a moment, then dropped to
the moss-covered rock, leaning back on her brown hands
and gazing intently. She sat there forgetful of every-
thing except the sketch which stood on the collapsible
easel.
  "Hit's purty !" she approved, in a low, musical mur-
mur. "Hit's plumb dead beautiful!" Her eyes were
glowing with delighted approval.
  She had never before seen a picture more worthy
than the chromos of advertising calendars and the few
crude prints that find their way into the roughzst places,
and she was a passionate, though totally unconscious,
devot6e of beauty. Now she was sitting before a sketch,
its paint still moist, which more severe critics would
have pronounced worthy of accolade. Of course, it was
not a finished picture merely a study of what lay
before her-but the hand that had placed these brush-
strokes on the academy board was the sure, deft hand
of a master of landscape, who had caught the splendid
spirit of the thing, and fixed it immutably in true and
glowing appreciation. Who he was; where he had gone;
why his work stood there unfinished and abandoned,
were details which for the moment this half-savage
child-woman forgot to question. She was conscious
only of a sense of revelation and awe. Then she saw
other boards, like the one upon the easel, piled near
the paint-box. These were dry, and represented the
work of other days; but they were all pictures of her
own mountains, and in each of them, as in this one,
was something that made her heart leap.
  To her own people, these steep hillsides and "coves"
and valleys were a matter of course. In their stony



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