Even the tuneful glory of the burgundy and scarlet mountains hurt her
into wincing--for was it not the clarion of Beauty that Samson had
heard--and in answer to which he had left her? So, she would sit, and
let her eyes wander, and try to imagine the sort of picture those same
very hungry eyes would see, could she rip away the curtain of purple
distance, and look in on him--wherever he was. And, in imagining such a
picture, she was hampered by no actual knowledge of the world in which
he lived--it was all a fairy-tale world, one which her imagination
shaped and colored fantastically. Then, she would take out one of his
occasional letters, and her face would grow somewhat rapt, as she
spelled out the familiar, "I love you," which was to her the soul of
the message. The rest was unimportant.

She would not be able to write
that Christmas. letter. There had been too many interruptions in the
self-imparted education, but some day she would write. There would
probably be time enough. It would take even Samson a long while to
become an artist. He had said so, and the morbid mountain pride forbade
that she should write at all until she could do it well enough to give
him a complete surprise. It must be a finished article, that letter--or
nothing at all!

One day, as she was walking homeward from her lonely trysting place,
she met the battered-looking man who carried medicines in his
saddlebags and the Scriptures in his pocket, and who practised both
forms of healing through the hills. The old man drew down his nag, and
threw one leg over the pommel.