The boy's face was somber in the intensity of his mental struggle, and
his answer had that sullen ring which was not really sullenness at all,
but self-repression.

"I reckon a feller's biggest right is to stand by his kinfolks. Unc'
Spicer's gittin' old. He's done been good ter me. He needs me here."

"I appreciate that. He will be older later. You can go now, and come
back to him when he needs you more. If what I urged meant disloyalty to
your people, I would cut out my tongue before I argued for it. You must
believe me in that. I want you to be in the fullest sense your people's
leader. I want you to be not only their Samson--but their Moses."

The boy looked up and nodded. The mountaineer is not given to
demonstration. He rarely shakes hands, and he does not indulge in
superlatives of affection. He loved and admired this man from the
outside world, who seemed to him to epitomize wisdom, but his code did
not permit him to say so.

"I reckon ye aims ter be friendly, all right," was his conservative
response.

The painter went on earnestly: "I realize that I am urging things of which your people disapprove,
but it is only because they misunderstand that they do disapprove. They
are too close, Samson, to see the purple that mountains have when they
are far away. I want you to go where you can see the purple. If you are
the sort of man I think, you won't be beguiled. You won't lose your
loyalty. You won't be ashamed of your people."