Lescott stayed on a week after that simply in deference to Samson's
insistence. To leave at once might savor of flight under fire, but when
the week was out the painter turned his horse's head toward town, and
his train swept him back to the Bluegrass and the East. As he gazed out
of his car windows at great shoulders of rock and giant trees, things
he was leaving behind, he felt a sudden twinge of something akin to
homesickness. He knew that he should miss these great humps of
mountains and the ragged grandeur of the scenery. With the rich
smoothness of the Bluegrass, a sense of flatness and heaviness came to
his lungs. Level metal roads and loamy fields invited his eye. The
tobacco stalks rose in profuse heaviness of sticky green; the hemp
waved its feathery tops; and woodlands were clear of underbrush--the
pauper counties were behind him.

A quiet of unbroken and deadly routine settled down on Misery. The
conduct of the Souths in keeping hands off, and acknowledging the
justice of Tamarack Spicer's jail sentence, had been their answer to
the declaration of the Hollmans in letting Samson ride into and out of
Hixon. The truce was established. When, a short time later, Tamarack
left the country to become a railroad brakeman, Jesse Purvy passed the
word that his men must, until further orders, desist from violence. The
word had crept about that Samson, too, was going away, and, if this
were true, Jesse felt that his future would be more secure than his
past. Purvy believed Samson guilty, despite the exoneration of the
hounds. Their use had been the idea of over-fervent relatives. He
himself scoffed at their reliability.