"I hain't ter say skeered," she told him, "but, ef ye wants ter walk as fur as the stile, I hain't a-keerin'."
The youth rose, and, taking his hat and rifle, followed her.
Lescott was happily gifted with the power of facile adaptation, and he unobtrusively bent his efforts toward convincing his new acquaintances that, although he was alien to their ways, he was sympathetic and to be trusted. Once that assurance was given, the family talk went on much as though he had been absent, and, as he sat with open ears, he learned the rudiments of the conditions that had brought the kinsmen together in Samson's defense.
At last, Spicer South's sister, a woman who looked older than himself, though she was really younger, appeared, smoking a clay pipe, which she waved toward the kitchen.
"You men kin come in an' eat," she announced; and the mountaineers, knocking the ashes from their pipes, trailed into the kitchen.
The place was lit by the fire in a cavernous hearth where the cooking was still going forward with skillet and crane. The food, coarse and greasy, but not unwholesome, was set on a long table covered with oilcloth. The roughly clad men sat down with a scraping of chair legs, and attacked their provender in businesslike silence.
The corners of the room fell into obscurity. Shadows wavered against the sooty rafters, and, before the meal ended, Samson returned and dropped without comment into his chair. Afterward, the men trooped taciturnly out again, and resumed their pipes.
A whippoorwill sent his mournful cry across the tree-tops, and was answered. Frogs added the booming of their tireless throats. A young moon slipped across an eastern mountain, and livened the creek into a soft shimmer wherein long shadows quavered. The more distant line of mountains showed in a mist of silver, and the nearer heights in blue -gray silhouette. A wizardry of night and softness settled like a benediction, and from the dark door of the house stole the quaint folklore cadence of a rudely thrummed banjo. Lescott strolled over to the stile with every artist instinct stirred. This nocturne of silver and gray and blue at once soothed and intoxicated his imagination. His fingers were itching for a brush.