Was born, did he say? No, he had been born a second time! In these long hours of misery and pain, David Joslin had taken accounting as best he might with life and the philosophies thereof. In his fashion of thought, he had gained the conviction that his “call” had come to him. He was called for a different life. There was no doubt about it. New duties lay before him—all of a new life—because he had been born again! To him his salvation was not less than a miracle, and he accepted it as such solemnly and reverently, feeling himself now consecrated fully for some cause. What the form of that consecration might be he himself did not clearly know as yet.
But there came to him, with this feeling, the solemn conviction that he must leave this country. This opportunity seemed to him providential. No, he would not even go to say farewell to his wife, nor to greet his grandma, Granny Joslin, to give counsel to her. He, being dead, must depart secretly forever from these hills until he might return to them to do the thing given him to do.
Such, unnatural and hard as that might seem to others, was the ancient, grim, uncompromising creed of David Joslin of the Cumberlands. Let the dead bury its dead. Let the living live their own lives.
Weakly, slowly, he climbed along the mountain side above the creek bed, to avoid any passerby, and so at length reached the point upon the opposing hill whence he might look down upon the little home once owned by the man who lay there now, under the drying yellow ridge in the apple orchard planted by his sires.
How long David Joslin sat here, his chin in his hands, he himself might not have told. He sat looking down, pondering, resolving.... Yes, he was born again! What must he do?
At length he rose, staggeringly rose, seeking about for some broken branch to aid him further in his journey. For now he purposed a long, long journey out from these hills. He was going away from his own people!
His hand fell against something hard in the side pocket of his ragged coat. It was the old book he had borrowed of his father—the well-thumbed volume of Calvin’s Institutes. His belt and revolver were gone—he knew not where—but here was this ancient, iron book. He recalled now, with the tenacious memory of the mountaineer, a passage which he had read therein: