 19 And still further into that far silence about which she used to dream at the base of the big pine went little June. At dusk weary and travel-stained, she sat in the parlours of a hotel, a great grey column structure of stone. She was confused and bewildered, and her head ached. The journey had been long and tiresome, the swift motion of the train had made her dizzy and faint. The dust and smoke had almost stifled her, and even now the dismal parlours, rich and wonderful as they were to her unaccustomed eyes, oppressed her deeply. If she could have one more breath of mountain air. The day had been too full of wonders, impressions that crowded on her sensitive brain so thick and fast that the recollection of them was as through a haze. She had never been on a train before, and when, as it crashed ahead, she clutched Hale's arm in fear and asked how they stopped it. Hale, herring the whistle-blow for a station, said, I'll show you. And he waved one hand out the window, and he repeated this trick twice before she saw it was a joke. All day he had soothed her uneasiness in some such way, and all day he watched her with an unusual smile that was puzzling to her. She remembered sadly watching the mountains dwindle and disappear, and when several of her own people who were on the train were left at weigh stations, it seemed as though all links that bound her to her home were broken. The face of the country changed, the people changed in looks, manners and dress, and she shrank closer to Hale with an ever-increasing sense of painful loneliness. These leveled fields and these farmhouses so strangely built, so varied in colour, were the settlements, and these people so nicely dressed, so clean and fresh-looking, or foreigners. At one station a crowd of schoolgirls had got on board, and she had watched them with keen interest, misdivided by their incessant chatter and gaiety. And at last had come the big city, with more smoke, more dust, more noise, more confusion, and she was in his world. That was the thought that comforted her. It was his world, and now she sat alone in the dismal parlours while Hale was gone to find his sister, waiting and trembling at the ordeal close upon her, of meeting Helen Hale. Below Hale found his sister and her maid registered, and a few minutes later he led Miss Hale into the parlour. As they entered June rose without advancing, and for a moment the two stood facing each other, the still, roughly clad, primitive mountain girl, and the exquisite modern woman. In an embarrassment equally painful to both. June, this is my sister. At a loss what to do, Helen Hale simply stretched out her hand, but drawn by June's timidity, and the quick admiration and fear in her eyes, she leaned suddenly forward and kissed her. A grateful flush overspread the little girl's features and the pallor that instantly succeeded went straight away to the sister's heart. You are not well, she said, quietly, and kindly. You must go to your room at once. I am going to take care of you. You are my little sister now. June lost a subtlety in Miss Hale's emphasis, but she fell with instant submission under such gentle authority, and though she could say nothing, her eyes glistened and her lips quivered, and without looking at Hale she followed his sister out of the room. Hale stood still. He had watched the meeting with apprehension, and now, surprised and grateful, he went to Helen's parlour and waited with a hopeful heart. When his sister entered he rose eagerly. Well, he said, stopping suddenly, for there were tears of vexation, dismay, and genuine distress on his sister's face. Oh, Jack, she cried. How could you? How could you? He opened his lips, turned and paced the room. He had hoped too much, and yet what else could he have expected? His sister and June knew as little about each other and each other's lives as though they had occupied different planets. He had forgotten that Helen must be shocked by June's inaccuracies of speech and in a hundred other ways to which he had become accustomed. With him moreover the process had been gradual, and moreover he had been beneath it all, and yet he had foolishly expected Helen to understand everything at once. He was unjust, so very wisely he held himself in silence. Where is her baggage, Jack? Helen had opened her trunk and was lifting out the lid. She ought to change those dusty clothes at once. You'd better ring in and have it set right up. No, said Hale. I will go down and see about it myself. He returned presently his face aflame with June's carpet bag. I believe this is all she has, he said quietly. In spite of herself, Helen's grief changed to a fit of helpless laughter and afraid to trust himself further. Hale rose to leave the room, at the door. He was met by the negro maid. Miss Helen? She said with an open smile. Miss June say she don't want nothing. Hale gave her a fiery look and hurried out. June was seated at the window. When he went into her room with her face buried in her arms she lifted her head, dropped it, and he saw that her eyes were red with weeping. Are you sick, little girl? He asked anxiously. June shook her head helplessly. You aren't homesick, are you? No. The answer came very farantly. Don't you like my sister? They had bowed in emphatic, yes, yes. Then what is the matter? Oh, she said despairingly between her sobs. She won't like me. I never can be like her. Hale smiled, but her grief was so sincere that he leaned over her and with a tender hand soothed her into quiet. Then he went to Helen again and he found her overhauling dresses. I've brought along several things of different sizes and I'm going to try at any rate. Oh, she added hastily. Only, of course, until she can get some clothes of her own. Sure, said Hale, but his sister waved her hand and again. Hale kept still. June had bathed her eyes and was lying down when Helen entered. And she made not the slightest objection to anything the latter proposed. Straight away, she fell under as complete subjection to her as she had done to Hale. Without a moment's hesitation, she drew off her rudely fashion dress and stood before Helen with utmost simplicity. Her beautiful arms and throat bare and her hair falling about them, with the rich gold of a cloud and an autumn sunset. Dressed, she could hardly breathe, but when she looked at herself in the mirror she trembled. Magic transformation! Apparently the chasm between the two had been bridged in a single instant. Helen herself was astonished and again her heart warmed toward the girl. When a little later she stood timidly under Hale's scrutiny, eagerly watching his face and flushing Rosie with happiness under his brightening look. Her brother had not exaggerated. The little girl was really beautiful. When they went down to the dining-room there was another surprise for Helen Hale. For June's timidity was gone and to the wonder of the woman. She was clothed with an impassive reserve, that in herself would have been little less than haughtiness, and as astounding in a child. She saw, too, that the change in the girl's bearing was unconscious and that the presence of strangers had cost it. It was plain that June's timidity sprang from her love of Hale. Her fear of not pleasing him and not pleasing her, his sister, and plain, too, that remarkable self-poise was little June's to command. At the table June kept her eyes fastened on Helen Hale. Not a movement escaped her and she did nothing that was not done by one of the others first. She said nothing, but if she had to answer questions she spoke with such care and precision that she almost seemed to be using a foreign language. Miss Hale smiled, but with inward approval, and that night she was in better spirits. Jack? She said when he came to bid her a good night. I think we'd better stay here a few days. I thought, of course, you were exaggerating, but she is very, very lovely. And that man of hers, well, it passes my understanding. Just leave everything to me. Hale was very willing to do that. He had all trust in his sister's judgment. He knew her dislike of interference, her love of autocratic supervision, so he asked no questions but in grateful relief, kissed her good night. The sister sat for a long time at her window after he was gone. Her brother had been long away from civilization. He had become infatuated, the girl loved him, he was honorable, and in his heart he meant to marry her. That was to her the whole story. She had been mortified by the misstep, but the misstep made only one thought had occurred to her, to help him all she could. She had been appalled when she first saw the dusty, shrinking mountain girl, but the helplessness and the loneliness of the tired little face touched her, and she was straightaway responsive to the mute appeal and the dark eyes that were lifted to her own with such modest fear and wonder. Now her surprise at her brother's infatuation was abating rapidly. The girl's adoration of him, her wild beauty, her strange winning personality, as rare and as independent of birth and circumstances genius, had soon made that phenomenon plain. And now, what was to be done? The girl was quick, observant, imitative, docile, and in the presence of strangers, her gravity of manner gave the impression of uncanny self-position. It seemed as though anything might be possible. Had Helen's suggestion then, the three stayed where they were for a week, for June's wardrobe was sadly in need of attention. So the week was spent in shopping, driving, and walking, and rapidly, as it passed for Helen and Hale, it was to June the longest of her life. So filled was it with a thousand sensations unfelt by them. The city had been stirred by the spirit of the New South. But the charm of the old was distinct everywhere. Architectural eccentrities had startled the sleepy, maple-shadowed rows of comfortable uniform dwellings here and there. And in some streets the life was brisk, but it was still possible to see pedestrian strolling with unconscious good humour around piles of goods on the sidewalk. Businessmen, stomping for a social chat on the streets, streetcars moving independent of time, men invariably giving up their seats to women, and strangers are not. Depositing their fare for them, the drivers sat to courteous personal service of each patron of the road now holding a car, and placidly whistling while some lady who had signaled from her doorway went back indoors for some forgotten article, now twisting the reins around the brakes and leaving a parcel in some yard, and no one grumbling. But what was to Hale, an atmosphere of amusing leisure, was to June be wildering confusion. To her his amusement was unintelligible, but through inconstant wonder at everything she saw, no one would ever have suspected that she was making her first acquaintance with city scenes. At first the calm unconcern of her companions had puzzled her. She could not understand how they could walk along heedless of the wonderful visions that beckoned to her from the shop windows, fearless of the strange noises about them and scarcely noticing the great crowds of people or the strange shining vehicles that drung the streets. But she had quickly concluded that it was one of the demands of the new life to see little and be astonished at nothing, and Helen and Hale surprised in turn at her unconcern. Little suspected, the effort herself's oppression cost her. And when over some wonder she did lose herself, Hale would say, Just wait till you see New York. And June would turn her dark eyes to Helen for confirmation and see if Hale could be joking with her. It's all true, June, Helen would say. You must go there someday. It's true. But that town was enough and too much for June. Her head buzzed continuously, and she could hardly sleep. And she was glad when one afternoon they took her into the country again, the bluegrass country, and to the little town near which Hale had been born, and which was a dream city to June, and to a school of which an old friend of his mother was principal, and in which Helen herself was a temporary teacher. And Rumer had gone ahead of June. Hale had found her dashing about the mountains on the back of a wild bull, said Rumer. She was as beautiful as Europa, was of pure English descent and spoke the language of Shakespeare. The honourable sand Budd's hand was patent in this. She had saved Hale's life from moonshiners, and while he was really in love with her, he was pretending to educate her out of gratitude. And her dobless was the faint tracery of Miss An Saunders' natural suspicions, and their Hale left her, under the eye of his sister, left her to absorb another new life like a thirsty plant, and come back to the mountains to make his head swim with new witcheries. Chapter 20 The Boomb started after a shadow through the hills now, and Hale watched it sweep toward him with grim satisfaction at the fulfilment of his own prophecy, and with disgust, that by the irony of fate it should come from the very quarters where years before he had played the maddening part of lunatic at large. The avalanche was sweeping southward, Pennsylvania was creeping down the Alleghenies, emissaries of New York capital were pouring into the hills, the Tidewater of Virginia and the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, were sending in their best blood and youth, and friends of the helmeted Englishmen were hurrying over the seas. Eastern companies were taking up principalities, and at Cumberland Gap those helmeted Englishmen had acquired a kingdom. They were building a town there, too, with huge steel plants, broad avenues, and business blocks. That would have graced Broadway, and they were pouring out a million for every thousand that it would have cost Hale to acquire the land on which the work was going on. Moreover, they were doing it there, as Hale heard, because they were too late to get control of his Gap, through the Cumberland. At his Gap, too, the same movement was starting, and stage and wagon on mule and horse, riding and trying. Sometimes and even a foot came the rush of madmen. Horses and mules were drowned in the mud holes along the road. Such was the traffic, and such were the floods. The encomers slept eight in a room, burned oil at one dollar a gallon, and ate potatoes at ten cents apiece. The Grand Central Hotel was a humming real estate exchange, and night and day the occupants of any room could hear through their thin partitions, lots booming to right, left, behind, and in front of them. The labor and capital question was instantly solved, for everybody became a capitalist, carpenter, bricklayer, blacksmith, singing teacher, and preacher. There is no difference between the shrewdest businessman and a fool in a boom. For the boom levels all grades of intelligence and produces as distinct a form of insanity as you can find within the walls of an asylum. Lots took wings skyward. He all bought one for June for thirty dollars and sold it for a thousand. Before the autumn was gone he found himself on the way to ridiculous opulence, and when spring came he had the whirl in a sling, and, if he wished, he could toss it playfully at the sun and have it drop back into his hand again. And the boom spread down a valley, and into the hills. The police-guard had little to do, and over in the mountains the feud miraculously came to a sudden close. So pervasive indeed was the spirit of the times that the Honorable Sam Budd actually got old Buck Fallon and Dill Dave Tolliver to sign a truce, agreeing to a complete cessation of hostilities until he carried through a land deal in which both were interested. And after that was concluded nobody had time, even the Red Fox for the Devilry and Private Vengeance. So busy was everybody picking up the Manna, which was dropping straight from the clouds. Hale bought all of old Judd's Land, formed a stock company, and in a trade gave June a bonus of the stock. Money was plentiful as grains of sand, and the cashier at the bank in the back of the furniture store at the gap chuckled to his beardless directors as he locked the wooden door on the day before the great land sale. Capital stock paid in $13,000, deposits $300,000, loans $260,000, interest from 8 to 12%, and beardless though those directors were, that statement made them real. A club was formed, and the like of it was not below Mason and Dixon's line in the way of furniture, periodicals, liquors, and cigars. Poker ceased, it was too tame in competition with this new game of townlots. On the top of High Naba Kingdom was bought. The young bloods of the town would build a lake up there, run a road up and build a Swiss chalet on the very top for a country club. The booming editor was discharged, a new paper was started, and the ex-editor of a New York Daily was got to run it. If anybody wanted anything, he got it from no matter where, nor at what cost. Nor were the arts wholly neglected, one man who was proud of his voice thought he would like to take singing lessons. An emissary was sent to Boston to bring back the best teacher he could find. The teacher came with a method of placing the voice by trying to say come at the base of the nose and between the eyes. This was with the lips closed. He charged $2 per half hour for his effort, as he had each people say it twice for half an hour each day, and for six weeks the town was humming like a beehive. At the end of that period the teacher fell ill and went his way with a fat pocketbook, and not a warbling soul had got the chance to open his mouth. The experience dampened nobody. Generosity was limitless. It was equally easy to raise money for a roulette wheel, a cathedral, or an expedition to Africa, and even yet the railroad was miles away and even yet in February the improvement company had a great land sale. The day before it, competing purchasers has deposited checks aggregating three times the sum asked for by the company for the land, so the buyer spent the night organizing a pool to keep down competition and drawing lots for the privilege of bidding. For fairness the sale was an auction and one old farmer who had sold some of the land originally for a hundred dollars an acre bought back some of that land for a thousand dollars a lot. That sale was the climax and that early Hale got a warning word from England, but he paid no heed even though after the sale the boom slackened, poised, and stayed still. For optimism one is unquenchable, and another tide would come with another sale in May, and so the spring passed in the same joyous recklessness and same perfect hope. In April the first railroad reached a gap at last, and families came in rapidly, money was still plentiful, and right royally was it spent, for was not just as much more coming when the second road arrived in May? Life was easier too. Supplies came from New York. Eight o'clock dinners were in vogue and everybody was happy. Every man had two or three good horses and nothing to do. Place was full of visiting girls. They rode in parties to Kline Knob and the Ring of Hoof, and the laughter of youth made every dusk resonant with joy. On popular hill houses sprang up like magic and weddings came. The passing stranger was stunned to find out in the wilderness such a spot. Gayety, prodigal hospitality, a police force of gentlemen, nearly all of whom were college graduates, and a club where poker flourished in the smoke of Havana cigars, and a barrel of whiskey stood in one corner with a faucet waiting for the turn of any hand, and still the foundation of the new hotel was not started, and the coming of the new railroad did not make a mark change. For some reason the May sale was postponed by the improvement company. But what did it matter? Perhaps it was better to wait for the fall and so the summer went on unchanged. Every man still had a bank account, and in the autumn the boom would come again. At such a time June came home for a vacation, and Bob Berkeley came back from college for his. All through the school year Hale had got the best reports of June, his sister's letters were steadily encouraging. June had been very homesick for the mountains, and for Hale at first but the homesickness had quickly worn off, apparently for both. She had studied hard, had become a favorite among the girls, and had held her own among them in a surprising way. But it was on June's musical talent that Hale's sister always laid most stress, and on her voice which she said was really unusual. June wrote too at longer and longer intervals, and in her letters Hale could see the progress she was making, the change in her handwriting, the increasing formality of expression, and the increasing shrewdness of her comments on her fellow pupils, her teachers, and the life about her. She did not ride home for a reason Hale knew, though June never mentioned it, because there was no one at home who could read her letters. But she always sent messages to her father and Bob, and to the old miller and old hun, and Hale faithfully delivered them when he could. From her people as Hale learned from his sister, only one messenger had come during the year to June, and he came but once. One morning a tall black-haired uncouth young man in a slouch hat and a Prince Albert coat had strode up to the school with a big paper box under his arm and asked for June. As he handed the box to the maid at the door it broke and red apples burst from it and rolled down the steps. There was a shriek of laughter from the girls and the young man, flushing red as the apples turned without giving his name, and strode back with no little majesty, looking neither to right nor left. Hale knew and June knew that the visitor was her cousin Dave, but he never mentioned the incident to him. Though as the end of the session drew nigh her letters became more frequent and more full of messages to the people of Lonesome Cove, and she seemed eager to get back home. Over there about this time old Judd concluded suddenly to go west, taking bud with him and when Hale wrote the fact an answer came from June that showed the plot of tears. However, she seemed none the less in a hurry to get back. And when Hale met her at the station he was startled, for she came back in dresses that were below her shoe tops, with her wonderful hair masked in a golden glory on the top of her head and a little fairy-cross dangling at a woman's throat. Her figure had rounded, her voice had softened, she held herself as straight as a young popular and she walked the earth as though she had come straight from Olympus. And still, in spite of her new feathers and arrows and graces, there was in her eyes and in her laugh and in her moods all the subtle while charm of the child in Lonesome Cove. It was very time for June that summer, though her father and bud had gone west, for her stepmother was living with a sister, the cabin in Lonesome Cove was closed and June stayed at the gap. Not at the widow crane's boarding house, but with one of Hale's married friends on Popular Hill. And always was she young as she was, one of the merry parties of that happy summer. Even at the dances, for the dance too, June had learned. Moreover, she had picked up the guitar and many times when Hale had been out in the hills he would hear her silver, clear voice floating out into the moonlight as he made his way toward Popular Hill. And he would stop under the beaches and listen with ears of growing love to the wonder of it all. For it was he who was the ardent one of the two now. June was no longer the frank impulsive child who stood at the foot of the beach doggedly reckless if all the world knew her love for him. She had taken flight to some inner recesses where it was difficult for Hale to follow. And right puzzled he was to discover that he must now win again. What an ask! She had once so freely given. Barb Berkley too had developed amazingly. He no longer said Sir to Hale that was bad form at Harvard. He called him by his first name and looked him in the eye as a man to man. Just as June, Hale observed, no longer seemed in any awe of Miss Ann Saunders and to have lost all jealousy of her, or of anybody else. So swiftly had her instinct caught her now. She had nothing to fear. And Bob and June seemed mighty pleased with each other. And sometimes Hale watching them as they galloped past him on horseback, laughing and battering felt foolish to think of their perfect fitness. The one for their other. And the incongruity of himself in a relationship that would so naturally be theirs. At one thing he wondered. She had made an extraordinary record at school. And it seemed to him that it was partly through the consciousness that her brain would take care of itself. That she could pay such heed to what hitherto she had no chance to learn, dress, manners, deportment, and speech. Indeed, it was curious that she seemed to lay most stress on the very things to which he, because of his long rough life in the mountains, was growing more and more indifferent. It was quite plain that Bob, with his extreme gallantry of manner, his smart clothes, his highways, and his unconquerable gaiety, had supplanted him on the pedestal where he had been the year before. Just as somebody somewhere, his sister perhaps, had supplanted Miss Anne. Several times indeed. June had corrected Hale's slips of tongue with mischievous triumph. And once when he came back late from a long trip in the mountains and walked into dinner without changing his clothes, Hale saw her look from himself to the immaculate Bob with an unconscious comparison, that half amused, half worried him. The truth was, he was building a lovely Frankenstein, and from wondering what he was going to do with it, he was beginning to wonder now what it might some day do with him. And though he sometimes joked with Miss Anne, who had withdrawn now to the level plain of friendship with him, about the transformation that was going on, he worried, in a way that didn't neither his heart nor his brain good. Still he fought both to little purpose all that summer, and it was not till the time was nigh when June must go away again that he spoke both. For Hale's sister was going to marry, and it was her advice, that he should take June to New York, if only for the sake of her music and her voice. That very day June had for the first time seen her cousin Dave. He was on horseback, he had been drinking, and he pulled in and without an answer to her greeting, stared her over from head to foot. Coloring angrily, she stared on, and then he spoke thickly and with a sneer. Brought friesize now, ain't ye? I reckon maybe if you keep on you'll be good enough for him in a year or more. I'm much obliged for those apples, Dave, said June quietly, and Dave flushed a darker red and sat still, forgetting to renew the old threat that was on his tongue. But he's taught rankled in the girl, rankled more now than when Dave first made it. For she better saw the truth of it, and the hurt was the greater to her uncockable pride that kept her from betraying the hurt to Dave long ago and now, when he was making an old wound bleed afresh. But the pain was with her at dinner that night, and through the evening. She avoided Hale's eyes, though she knew that he was watching her all the time, and her instinct told her that something was going to happen that night, and what that something was. Hale was the last to go, and when he called to her from the porch, she went out trembling and stood at the head of the steps in the moonlight. I love you, little girl, he said simply, and I want you to marry me some day. Will you, June? She was unsurprised, but she flushed under his hungry eyes, and the little cross throbbed at her throat. Someday, not now, she thought, and then with equal simplicity, yes, Jack. And if you should love somebody else more, you'll tell me right away, won't you, June? She shrank a little, and her eyes fell, but straight away she raised them steadily. Yes, Jack? Thank you, little girl. Good night. Good night, Jack. Hale saw the little shrinking movement she made, and as he went down the hill he thought she seemed to be in a hurry to be alone, and that she caught a breath sharply as he turned away, and brooding, he walked the woods long that night. Only a few days later they started for New York, and with all her dreaming, June had never dreamed that the world could be so large. Mountains, the vast stretches of rolling hills and level land, melted away from her wandering eyes. Towns and cities sank behind them, swift streams, swollen by freshets, were all stripped, and left behind. Darkness came on, and through it they sped on. Once during the night she walked from a troubled dream in her birth, and for a moment she thought she was at home again. They were running through the mountains again, and there they lay, in the moonlight, the great calm dark faces that she knew and loved, and she seemed to catch the odor of the earth and feel the cool air on her face. But there was no pang of homesickness now. She was too eager for the world into which she was going. Next morning the air was cooler, the skies lower and grayer, the big city was close at hand. Then came the water, shaking and sparkling in the early light like a great cauldron of quicksilver, and the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge, a ribbon of twinkling lights tossed out through the mist from the mighty city that rose from the mist as from a fantastic dream. Then the picking of the way through the screeching little boats and noiseless big ones, and white bird like floating things that then they disappeared, like two tiny grains in a shifting human tine of sand. But Hale was happy now, for on the trip June had come back to herself and to him once more, and now on but unafraid eager, bubbling, uplooking, full of quaint questions about everything she saw. She was once more sitting with an affectionate reverence at his feet. When he left her in a great low house that fronted on the majestic Hudson, June clung to him with tears and of her own accord, kissed him for the first time since she had torn her little playhouse to pieces at the foot of the beach, down in the mountains far away. And Hale went back with peace in his heart, but to trouble in the hills. Not suddenly did the boom drop down there, not like a falling star but on the wings of hope, wings that ever fluttering upward, yet sank inexorably and slowly closed. The first crash came over the waters when certain big men over there went to pieces. Men on whose shoulders rested the colossal figures of progress that the English were carving from the hills at Cumberland Gap. Still nobody saw why a hurt to the lion should make the eagle soar and sow the American spirit at the other gaps and all of the Virginia valleys in the skirt of the Cumberland held faithful and dauntless for a while. But in time, as the huge steel plants grew noiseless and the flaming throats of the furnaces were throttled, a sympathetic fire of dissolution sped slowly north and south. And it was plain. Only to the wise outsider is merely a matter of time until all up and down the Cumberland, the fox and the coon and the quail could come back to their old homes on corner lots, marked each by a pathetic little whitewashed post, a tombstone, over the graves of a myriad of buried human hopes. But it was the gap where hail was that died last and hardest. And of the brave spirits there is was the last and hardest to die. In the autumn while June was in New York the signs were sure, but every soul refused to see them. Slowly, however, the vexed question of labor and capital was born again. For slowly each local capitalist went slowly back to his own trade. The black smith to his forge, but the carpenter not to his plane or the mason to his brick. There was no more building going on. The engineer took up his transit, the preacher politician and was oftener in his pulpit, and the singing teacher started on his round of raucas do me so la dos through the mountains again. It was curious to see how each man slowly, reluctantly and perforce sank back again to his old occupation, and the town with the luxuries of electricity, waterworks, bathtubs, and a street wearerly was having a hard fight for the plain necessities of life. The following spring notes for the second payment on the lots that had been bought at the great land sale fell due. And, but very few were paid. As no suits were brought by the company, however, hope did not quite die. June did not come home for the summer, and Hale did not encourage her to come. She visited some of her schoolmates in the north and took a trip west to see her father who had gone out there again and bought a farm. In the early autumn, double Judd came back to the mountains and announced his attention to leave them for good. But that autumn, the effects of the dead boom became perceptible in the hills. There were no coal lands bought, logging ceased, the factories varietal, once more moonshines stills flourished, quarreling started, and at the county seat one court date, double Judd whipped three felons with his bare fists. In the early spring a tolliver was shot from ambush, and old Judd was so furious at the outrage that he openly announced that he would stay at home until he had settled the old scores for good. For that, as the summer came on, matters between the felons and the tollivers were worse than they had been for years, and everybody knew that, with old Judd at the head of his clan, the fight would be fought to the finish. At the gap one institution only had suffered in spirit not at all. That was the Volunteer Police Guard. Indeed, as the excitement of the boom had died down the members of that force as a vent for their energies, went with more enthusiasm than ever into their work. Local lawlessness had been subdued by this time. The Guard had been extending its work into the hills, and it was only a question of time until it must take a part in the felon-tolliver troubles. Indeed, that time, he'll believe was not far away, for election day was at hand, and always on that day the feudalists came to the gap, in a search for trouble. Meanwhile, not long afterward, there was a pitched battle between the factions at the county seat and several of each would fight no more. Next day a felon whistled a bullet through Devil Judd's beard from ambush, and it was at such a crisis of all the warring ailments in her mountain life that June's school days were coming to a close. Hale had had a frank talk with old Judd, and the old man agreed that the two had best be married at once and live at the gap until things were quietest in the mountains. Though the old man still clung to his resolution to go west for good when he was done with the valence. At such a time then, June was coming home. CHAPTER XXI Hale was beyond Black Mountain, when her letter reached him. His work over there had to be finished, and so he kept in his saddle the greater part of two days and nights, and on a third day he rode his big black horse forty miles, in a little more than half a day that he might meet her at the train. The last two years had wrought their change on him. Deterioration is easy in the hills. Superfacial deterioration inhabits manor's personal appearance, and the practices of all the little niceties of life. The morning bath is impossible because of the crowded domestic conditions of a mountain cabin, and if possible, might have practiced to excite wonder and comet, if not vague suspicion. Sleeping garments are practically barred for the same reason. Shaving becomes a rare luxury. A lost toothbrush may not be replaced for a month. In time one may bring himself to eat with a knife for the reason that it is hard for a hungry man to feed himself with a fork. That has but two tines. Fingertips cease to be the cumulating standard of the gentleman. It is hard to keep a supply of fresh linen when one is constantly in the saddle. And a constant weariness of body and a ravenous appetite. Make a man indifferent to things like a bad bed and worse food, particularly as he must philosophically put up with them anyhow. Of all these things the man himself may be quite unconscious, and yet they affect him more deeply than he knows and show to a woman even in his voice, his walk, his mouth. Everywhere, save in the eyes, which change only in severity or in kindness, or when there has been some serious breakdown of soul or character within. And the woman will not look to his eyes for the truth, which makes its way slowly, particularly when the woman is driven for the very things that the man has so recklessly let go. She would never suffer herself to let down in such a way, and she does not understand how a man can. Hale's life since his college doors had closed behind him had always been a rough one. He had dropped from civilization and gone back into it many times, and each time he had dropped he dropped the deeper, and for that reason had he come back into his own life each time with more difficulty, and with more indifference. The last had been his roughest year, and he had sunk a little more deeply, just at the time when June had been pluming herself for flight from such depths forever. Moreover, Hale had been dominant in every matter that his hand or his brain had touched. His habit had been to say, do this, and it was done. Though he was no longer acting captain of the police guard, he always acted as captain whenever he was on hand, and always he was the undisputed leader in all questions of business, politics, or the maintenance of law and order. The success he had forged had hardened, and strengthened his mouth, steeled his eyes, and made him more masterful in mannerist speech and point of view, and naturally had added nothing to his gentleness, his unselfishness, his refinement, or the nice consideration of little things on which women lay such stress. It was an hour by sun when he clattered through the gap and pushed his tired black horse into a gallop across the valley toward the town. He saw the smoke of the little dummy, and as he thundered over the bridge at the North Fork, he saw that it was just about to pull out, and he waved his hat and shouted imperiously for it to wait. With his hand on the bell-rope, the conductor autocrat that he too was, did wait and hailed through his reins to the man who was nearest, hardly seeing who he was, and climbed aboard. He wore a slouch-tant spotted by contact with the roof of the mines which he had hastily visited on his way through lonesome cove. The growth of three days' beard was on his face he wore a gray woolen shirt and a blue handkerchief, none too clean, was loosely tied about his son's scorched column of a neck. He was spotted with mud from his waist to the soles of his rough-riding boots, and his hands were rough and grimy. But his eye was bright and keen, and his heart thumped eagerly. Again, it was the middle of June, and the town was a naked island in a sea of leaves, whose breakers literally had run mountain high and stopped for all time, motionless. Purple light's thick as mist veiled Powell's mountain. Below the valley was still flooded with yellow sunlight which lay along the mountain-sides, and was streak hair and there with the long shadow of a deep ravine. The beach-trunks on Ymboden Hill gleamed in it like little white body scantily draped with green, and the yawning gap held the yellow light as a bowl holds wine. He had long ago come to look upon the hill's merely as storehouses for iron and coal, put there for his special purpose. But now the long-submerged sense of the beauty of it all stirred within him again, for June was the incarnate spirit of it all and June was coming back to those mountains and to him. In June, June had seen the change in hail. The first year he had come off into New York to see her and they had gone to the theater and the opera, and June was pleased to play the part of heroin in what was such a real romance to the other girls in school. And she was proud of hail, but each time he came he seemed less interested in the diversions that meant so much to her, more absorbed in his affairs in the mountains, and less particular about his looks. His visits came at longer intervals, with each visit he stayed less long and each time he seemed more eager to get away. She had been shy about appearing before him for the first time in evening dress, and when he entered the drawing room she stood under a chandelier and blushing and resplendent confusion. But he seemed not to recognize that he had never seen her that way before, and for another reason June remained confused, disappointed, and hurt. For he was not only unobserving and seemingly unappreciative, but he was more silent than ever that night, and he looked gloomy. But if he had grown accustomed to her beauty there were others who had not. The smart dapper college youths gathered about her like bees around the flower, a triumphant fact to which he also seemed indifferent. Moreover, he was not an evening-close that night, and she did not know whether he had forgotten or was indifferent to them. And the contrast that he was made her that night almost ashamed of him. She never guessed what the matter was, for hail kept his troubles to himself. He was always gentle and kind, he was as lavish with her as though he were a king, and she was as lavish and prodigially generous as though she were a princess. There seemed no limit to the wizard income from the investments that hail had made for her when, as he said, he sold a part of her stock in a lonesome cove mine, and what she wanted, hail always sent her without question. Only as the end was coming on at the gap he wrote once to know if a certain amount would carry her through until she was ready to come home. But even that question aroused no suspicion in the thoughtless June, and then that last year he had come no more. Always, always, he was too busy. Not even on her triumphal night at the end of the session was he there. When she had stood before the guests and patrons of the school like a goddess, and had thrilled them into startling applause, her teachers into open, glowing pride, and the other girls into bright-eyed envy in herself, into still another new world. Now she was going home, and she was glad to go. She had awakened that morning with the keen air of the mountain in her nostrils, the air she had breathed in when she was born, and her eyes shone happily when she saw through her window, the love-blue hills along which raced the train. They were only a little away from the town where she must change, the porter said. She had overslept and she had no time even to wash her face and hands, and that worried her a good deal. The porter nearly lost his equilibrium when she gave him half a dollar. For women are not profused in the ways of tipping, and instead of putting her bag down on the station platform, he held it in his hand, waiting to do her further service. At the head of the steps she searched about for hail, and her lovely face looked vexed and little hurt when she did not see him. "'Hotel, Miss?' said the porter. "'Yes, please, Harvey,' she called. Mistani's black man sprang from the line of calling hotel porters and took her bag. Then every tooth in his head flashed. "'Lordy, Miss June, I never knowed you at all!' June smiled in the tribute she was looking for. "'Have you seen Mr. Hale?' "'Norm. Mr. Hale ain't been here for months, six months. I reckon he ain't in the country now. I ain't heard nothing about him for a long time.'" June knew better than that, but she said nothing. She would rather have had even Harvey think that he was away. So she hurried to the hotel. She would have four hours to wait, and asked for the one room that had a bath attached, the room to which Hale had sent her when she had passed through on her way to New York. She almost swinced when she looked in the mirror and saw the smoke stains about her pretty throat and ears, and she wondered if anybody could have noticed them on her way from the train. Her hands, too, were dreadful to look at, and she hurried to take off her things. In an hour she emerged fresh and immaculate from the crown of her lovely hair to her smartly booted feet, and at once she went downstairs. She heard the man whom she passed stop at the head of them and turned to look down at her, and she saw a next crane within the hotel office when she passed the door. On the street not a man and hardly a woman failed to look at her with wonder and open admiration. For she was an apparition in that little town, and it all pleased her so much that she became fleshed and conscious and felt like a queen who unknown moved among her subjects and blessed them just with her gracious presence. For she was unknown, even by several people whom she knew, and that too pleased her to have blossomed beyond their ken. She was like a meteor coming back to dazzle the very world from which it had flown for a while into space. When she went into the dining room for the mid-date dinner there was a movement in almost every part of the room as though there were many there who were on the lookout for her entrance. The head waiter lost his imperturable majesty for a moment in surprise at the vision, and then with a lordly yet obsequious wave of his hand led her to a table over in a corner where no one was sitting. Four young men came in rather boisterously, and made for her table. She lifted her calm eyes at them so hotly that the one in front halted with sudden embarrassment and they all swerved to another table from which they stared at her surreptitiously. Perhaps she was mistaken for the comic opera star whose brilliant picture she had seen on the billboard in front of the opera house. Well, she had the voice, and she might have been, and she might yet be, and if she were, this would be the distinction that would be shown her. And still, as it was, she was greatly pleased. At four o'clock she started for the hills. In half an hour she was dropping down a winding ravine along a rock lishing stream, with those hills so close to the car on either side that only now and then could she see the tops of them. Through the window the keen air came from the very lungs of them, frightened with the coolness of shadows the scent of damp earth and the faint fragrance of wildflowers, and her soul leaped to meet them. The mountain sides were showered with pink and white laurel, she used to call the ivy, and the rhododendrons, used to call them laurel, were just beginning to blossom. They were her old and fast friends. Mountain shadow, the wet earth, and its pure breath, and tree-plant and flower she had not forgotten them. And it was good to come back to them. Once she saw an overshot water-wheel on the bank of a rushing little stream, and she thought of Uncle Billy. She smiled and the smiles stopped short. She was going back to other things as well. The train had creaked by a log cabin set in the hillside, and then passed another and another, and always there were two or three ragged children in the door and a haggard, unkept woman peering over their shoulders. How lonely those cabins looked! How desolate the life they suggested to her now, now. The first station she came to after the train had wound down the long ravine to the valley level again was crowded with mountaineers. There a wedding party got aboard with a great deal of laughter, chafing in noise, and all three went on within and without the train while it was waiting. A sudden thought stunned her, like a lightning stroke. They were her people, out there on a platform and inside the car, ahead. Those rough men and slouch hats, jeans, and cowhide boots, their mouths stained with tobacco juice, their cheeks and eyes on fire with moonshine, and those women in poke-bonnets with their sad-worn, patient faces, on which the sympathetic good-chair and joy of the moment sat so strangely. She noticed their rough shoes and their homespun gowns that made their figures all alike and shapeless, with a vivid awakening of early memories. She might have been one of those narrow, live girls outside. Or that bride within had it not been for Jack Hale. She finished the name in her own mind that she was conscious that she had. Ah, well, that was a long time ago, and she was nothing but a child, and she had thrown herself at his head. Perhaps it was different with him now, and if it was, she would give him the chance to withdraw from everything. It would be right and fair, and then life was so full for her now. She was dependent on nobody, on nothing. A rainbow spanned the heavens above her, and the other end of it was not in the hills, but one end was, and to that end she was on her way. She was going to just such people as she had seen at the station. Her father and her kinsmen were just such men. Her stepmother and kinswomen were just such women. Her home was little more than just such a cabin as the desolate ones that stirred her pity when she swept by them. She thought of how she felt when she had first gone to Lonesome Cove after a few months at the Gap, and she shuddered to think how she would feel now. She was getting restless by this time, and aimlessly she got up and walked to the front of the car and back again to her seat, hardly noticing that the other occupants were staring at her with some wonder. She sat down for a few minutes, and then she went to the rear and stood outside on the platform, clutching a brass rod on the railing and looking back on a dropping darkness in which the hills seemed to be rushing together. Far behind as the train crashed on with its wake of sparklet rolling smoke. A cinder stung her face, and when she lifted her hand to the spot she saw that her glove was black with grime. With a little shiver of disgust she went back to her seat, and with her face to the blackness rushing past her window she sat brooding. Brooding. Why had Hale not met her? He had said he would, and she had written him when she was coming, and had telegraphed him at the station in New York when she started. Perhaps he had changed. She recalled that even his letters had grown less frequent, shorter, more hurried the past year. Well, he should have his chance. Always, however, her mind kept going back to the people at the station and to her people in the mountains. They were the same, she kept repeating to herself, the very same. And she was one of them, and always she kept thinking of her first trip to Lumpkin Cove after her awakening, and of what her next would be. That first time Hale had made her go back, and she had left, in homespuns, sun bonnet, and brogons. There was the same reason why she should go back. That way now is then. Would Hale insist that she should now? She almost laughed aloud at the thought. She knew that she would refuse, and she knew that his reason would not appeal to her now. She no longer cared for what her neighbors and kin's people might think and say. The porter paused at her seat. How much longer is it? She asked. Half an hour, miss. June went to wash her face and hands, and when she came back to his seat, a great glare shone through the windows on the other side of the car. It was a furnace, a run, was on, and she could see the streams of white molten metal, racing down the narrow channels of sand to their narrow beds on either side. The whistle freaked ahead for the gap, and she nerved herself with the prophetic sense of vague trouble at hand. At the station Hale had paced the platform. He looked at his watch to see whether he might have time to run to the furnace half a mile away and board the train there. He thought he had, and he was about to start when the shriek of the incoming engine rose beyond the low hills in Wildcat Valley, echoed along Powell's mountain and broke against a wrinkled breast of the Cumberland. On it came, and in plain sight it stopped suddenly to take water, and Hale cursed it silently and recalled viciously that when he was in a hurry to arrive anywhere the water tower was always on the wrong side of the station. He got so restless that he started for it on a run, and he had gone hardly fifty yards before the train came on again, and he had to run back to beat it to the station, where he sprang to the steps of the Pullman before it stopped, pushing the porter aside to find himself checked by the crowded passengers on the door. June was not among them, and straight away he ran for the rear of the car. June had risen, the other occupants of the car had crowded forward, and she was the last of them. She had stood, during an irritating wait, at the water tower, and now she moved slowly forward again. She heard the hurry of feet behind her, and she turned to look into the eager, wandering eyes of John Hale. June, he cried in amazement, but his face lighted with joy, and he impulsively stretched out his arms as though he meant to take her in them, but as suddenly he dropped them before the startled look in her eyes, which, with one swift glance, searched him from head to foot. They shook hands almost gravely. June sat in the rule dummy, the focus of curious eyes, while Hale was busy seeing that her baggage was got aboard. The checks that she gave him jingled in his hands like a bunch of keys, and he could hardly help grinning when he saw the huge trunks and the smart bags that were tumbled from the baggage car, all marked with her initials. There had been days when he had laid considerable emphasis on pieces like those, and when he thought of them overwhelming with opulent suggestions that debt-stricken little town, and later piled incorgetously on the porch of the cabin on Lonesome Cove. He could have laughed aloud, but for a nameless something that was gnawing savagely at his heart. He felt almost shy when he went back into the car, and though June greeted him with a smile, her immaculate daintyness made him unconsciously sit quite far away from her. The little ferry cross was still at her throat, but a tiny diamond gleamed from each end of it, and from the center as from a tiny heart pulsated the light of a little blood-red ruby. To him it meant the loss of June's simplicity, and was the symbol of her new estate. But he smiled and forced himself into hearty cheerfulness of manner and asked her questions about her trip. But June answered in halting monosyllables, and talk was not easy between them. All the while he was watching her closely, and not a movement of her eye, ear, mouth, or hand, not an inflection of her voice escaped him. He saw her sweep the car and its occupants with a glance, and he saw the results of that glance in her face, and the down-dropping of her eyes to the dainty point of one boot. He saw her beautiful mouth closed suddenly tight in her thin nostrils quiver, disdainfully when a swirl of black smoke heavy with cinders came in with an entering passenger through the front door of the car. Two half-drunken men were laughing boisterously near that door, and even her ears seemed trying to shut out their half-smothered rough talk. The car started with a bump that swayed her toward him, and when she caught the seat with one hand it checked as suddenly, throwing her the other way, and then with a leap it sprang ahead again. Giving a nagging snap to her head, her whole face grew red with vexation and shrinking distaste, and all the while, when the little train steadied into its creaking, puffing, jostling way, one gloved hand on the chased silver handle of her smart little umbrella kept nervously swaying it to and fro on its steel-shod point, until she saw that the point was in a tiny pool of tobacco juice, and then she laid it across her lap with shuttering swiftness. At first Hale thought that she had shrunk from kissing him in the car because other people were around. He knew better now. At that moment he was as rough and dirty as the chain carrier opposite him, who was just in from a surveying expedition in the mountains, as the sooty breakmen who came through to gather up the fares as one of those good-natured, profane inebriates up in the corner. No, it was not publicity. She had shrunk from him as she had was shrinking now from black smoke, rough men, the shaking of the train, the little pool of tobacco juice at her feet. The truth began to glimmer through his brain. He understood even when she leaned forward suddenly to look into the mouth of the gap that was now dark with shadows. Through that gap lay her way and she thought him now more a part of what was beyond than she who had been born of it was, and dazed by the thought he wondered if he might not really be. At once he straightened in his seat and his mind made up, as he always made it up, swiftly. He had not explained why he had not met her that morning, nor had he apologized for his rough garb, because he was so glad to see her and because there were so many other things he wanted to say. And when he saw her, conscious and resentful, perhaps that he had not done those things at once, he deliberately declined to do them now. He became silent, but he grew more courteous, more thoughtful, watchful. She was very tired, poor child. There were deep shadows under her eyes which looked weary and almost mournful. So when with a clanging of the engine-bell they stopped at the brilliantly lit hotel, he let her at once upstairs to the parlor, and from there sent her up to her room, which was ready for her. You must get a good sleep, he said kindly, and with his usual firmness that was want to preclude argument. You are warned to death. I'll have your supper sent to your room. The girl felt a subtle change in his manner and her lip quivered, for a vague reason that neither knew, but without a word, she obeyed him like a child. He did not try again to kiss her. He merely took her hand, placed his left over it, and with a gentle pressure said, Good night, little girl. Good night, she faltered. Resolutely, relentlessly, first. Hale cast up his account's liabilities, resources, that night. To see what, under the least favorable outcome, the balance left to him would be. Nearly all was gone. His securities were already sold, his lots would not bring at public sale one half of the deferred payments yet to be made on them, and if the company brought suit, as it was threatening to do, he would be left fathoms deep in debt. The branch railroad did not come up the river, betward Lonesome Cove, and now he meant to build barges and float his cannel coal down to the main line for his sole hope, was in the mine in Lonesome Cove. The means that he could command were meager. But they would carry his purpose with June for a year at least, and then, who knew? He might, through that mine, be on his feet again. But little town was dark and asleep when he stepped into the cool night air and made his way past the old school house and up in Bowden Hill. He could see, all shining silver in the moonlight, the still crest of the big beach, at the blessed roots of which his lips had met June's on the first kiss that had passed between them. On he went through the shadowy isle that the path made between other beach trunks harnessed by the moonlight, with silver armor and motionless as sentinels on watch till dawn. Out past the amphitheater of darkness from which the dead trees tossed out their crooked arms, as though voicing silently now his own soul's torment, and then on to the point of the spur of the foothills, where, with the mighty mountains encircling him and the world, a dreamland lighted only by stars. He stripped his soul before the maker of it, and of him, and fought his fight out alone. His was the responsibility for all, his alone. No one else was to blame. June, not at all. He had taken her from her own life, had swerved her from the way of to which God pointed, when she was born. He had given her everything she wanted, and allowed her to do what she pleased, and had let her think that, through his miraculous handling of her resources, she was doing it all herself. And the result was natural. For the past two years he had been harassed with debt, racked with worries, writhing this way and that. Concerned only with the soul-tormenting catastrophe that had overtaken him. About all else he had grown careless. He had not been to see her the last year. He had written seldom, and it appalled him to look back now on his own self-absorption, and to think how he must have appeared to June. And he had gone on in that self-absorption to the very end. He had got his license to marry, had asked Uncle Billy, who was magistrate as well as Miller, to marry them. And a rough mountaineer himself to the outward eye, he had appeared to lead a child like a lamb to the sacrifice and had found a woman with a mind, heart, and purpose of her own. It was all his work. He had sent her away to fit her for his station in life, to make her fit to marry him. She had risen above and now he was not fit to marry her. That was the brutal truth, a truth that was enough to make a wise man laugh or a fool weep. And hail did neither. He simply went on working to make out how he could best discharge the obligations that he had voluntarily, willingly, gladly, selfishly even assumed. In his mind he treated conditions only as he sought, felt them, and believed them at that moment true. And into the problem he went no deeper than to find his simple duty, and that, while the morning stars were sinking, he found. And it was a duty, the harder to find because everything had reawakened within him. And the starting point of that awakening was the proud glow in Uncle Willie's kind old face, when he knew the part he was to play in the happiness of Hail and June. All the way over the mountain that day his heart had gathered fuel from memories that the big pine and down the mountain and through the gap, to be set aflame by the yellow sunlight in the valley and the throbbing life in everything that was alive. For the month was June and the spirit of that month was on her way back to him. So when he rose now with back-throne head he stretched his arms suddenly out towards those far-seeing stars, and as suddenly dropped him with an angry shake of his head and one quick gritting of his teeth. That such a thought should have mastered him even for one swift second. The thought of how lonesome would be the trail that would be his to follow after that day. June tired though she was, tossed restlessly that night. The one look she had seen in Hail's face when she met him in the car told her the truth as far as he was concerned. He was unchanged. She could give him no chance to withdraw from their long understanding. For it was plain to her quick instinct that he wanted none. And so she had asked him no question about his failure to meet her, for she knew now that his reason, no matter what, was good. He had startled her in the car, for her mind was heavy with memories of the poor little cabins she had passed on the train, the mountain men and women in the wedding-party, and Hail himself was to the eyes so much like one of them. Had so startled her that, though she knew his instinct, too was at work, she could not gather herself together to combat her own feelings. For every little happening in the dummy but drew her back to her previous train of painful thought. And in that helplessness she had told Hail good night. She remembered now how she had looked upon Lonesome Cove after she went to the gap, how she had looked upon the gap after her year in the bluegrass, and how she looked back even on the first big city she had seen there from the lofty vantage-ground of New York. What was the use of it all? Why, lovoriously, climb a hill merely to sea and yearn for things that you cannot have, if you must go back and live in the hollow again? Well, she thought rebelliously. She would not go back to the hollow again, that was all. She knew what was coming and her cousin Dave's perpetual snare sprang suddenly from the past to cut through her again and the old pride rose within her once more. She was good enough now for Hail, oh yes. She thought bitterly, good enough now. And then remembering his life-long kindness, and thinking what she might have been but for him, she burst into tears at the unworthiness of her own thought. Uh-huh, what should she do? What should she do? Repeating that question over and over again, she fell toward mourning into troubled sleep. She did not wake until nearly noon, for already she had formed the habit of sleeping late, late at least for that part of the world. And she was glad when the boy brought her word that Mr. Hail had been called up the valley and would not be back until the afternoon. She dreaded to meet him, for she knew that he had seen the trouble within her, and she knew he was not the kind of man to let matters drag vaguely, if they could be cleared up and settled by open frankness of discussion, no matter how blunt he must be. She had to wait until midday dinner time to get something to eat, so she lay a bed, picked a breakfast from the menu, which was spotted dirty and meager in offerings, and had it brought to her room. Early in the afternoon she issued forth into the sunlight and started toward Emboden Hill. It was very beautiful and soul comforting, the warm air, the luxuriously wooded hills, with their shades of green that told her where popular and oak and beech and maple grew. The delicate haze of blue that overlay them and deepened as her eyes followed the still mountain piles northeastward to meet the big range that shut her in from the outer world. The changes had been many. One part of the town had been wiped out by fire, and a few buildings of stone had risen up. On the streets she saw strange faces, but now and then she stopped to shake hands with somebody whom she knew and who recognized her always with surprise and spoke but few words, and then as she thought with some embarrassment. Half unconsciously she turned toward the old mill. There it was, dusty and gray, and the dripping old wheel cranked with its weight. The shining water and the muffled roar of the unseen dam started an answering stream of memories surging within her. She could see the window of her room in the old brick boarding house, and as she passed the gate she almost stopped to go in, but the face of a strange man who stood in the door with a proprietary error deterred her. There was Hale's little frame cottage and his name half washed out, was over the wing that was still his office. Passed that she went with a passing temptation to look within and toward the old schoolhouse. A massive new one was half built of gray stone to the left, but the old one with its shingles on the outside that had once caused her such wonder still lay warm in the sun, but closed and deserted. There was the playground where she had been caught in ring around the Rosie, and Hale and that girl teacher had heard her confession. She flushed again when she thought of that day, but the flush was now for another reason. Over the roof of the schoolhouse she could see the beach tree where she had built her playhouse and memory led her from the path toward it. She had not climbed a hill for a long time and she was panting when she reached it. There was the scattered playhouse. It might have leaned there untouched for a quarter of a century, just as her angry feet had kicked it to pieces. On a root of the beach she sat down in the broad rim of her hat, scratched the trunk of it, and annoyed her, so she took it off, and leaned her head against the tree. Looking up into the underworld of the leaves, through which a sun beam filtered here and there, one striking her hair which had darkened to the duller gold striking it eagerly, unerringly as though it had started for just such a shining mark. Below her was outspread the little town, the straggling wretched little town, crude, lonely, lifeless. She could not be happy and lonesome cove after she had known the gap, and now her horizons had so broadened that she felt now toward the gap and its people, as she had then felt toward the mountaineers, for the standards of living in the cove, so it seemed, were no farther below the standards in the gap, than they in turn were lower than the new standards to which she had adapted herself while away. Indeed, even that bluegrass world where she had spent a year was too narrow now for her vaulting ambition, and with that thought she looked down again on the little town, a lonely island in a sea of mountains and as far from the world for which she had been training herself, as though it were in mid-ocean. Live down there? She shuddered at the thought and straight away was very miserable. The clear piping of a wood-thrush rose far away, a tear started between her half-closed lashes, and she might have gone to weeping silently, had her ear not caught the sound of something moving below her. Someone was coming that way, so she brushed her eyes swiftly with her handkerchief and stood upright against the tree. And there again Hale found her, tense, upright, bareheaded again, and her hands behind her. Only her face was not uplifted and dreaming. It was turned toward him, unstartled, and torn. Expected. He stopped below her and leaned one shoulder against a tree. I saw he passed the office, he said, and I thought I should find you here. His eyes dropped to the scattered playhouse of long ago and a faint smile that was full of submerged sadness passed over his face. It was his playhouse, after all, that she had kicked to pieces. But he did not mention it nor her attitude nor did he try in any way to arouse her memories of that other time at the same place. I want to talk with you, June, and I want to talk now. Yes, Jack, she said temmiously. For a moment he stood in silence. His face half turned, his teeth hard on his in-drawn lip. Thinking. There was nothing of the mountaineer about him now. He was clean-shaven and dressed with care. June saw that. But he looked quite old, his face seemed harried with worries and ravaged by suffering. And June had suddenly to swallow a quick surging of pity for him. He spoke slowly and without looking at her. June, if it hadn't been for me, you would be over and lonesome cove and happily married by this time. Or at least contented with your life, for you wouldn't have known any other. I don't know, Jack. I took you out. And at rest with you, rather I shall be sorry, I did. Sorry wholly on your account, I mean, he said hastily. She knew what he meant, and she said nothing. She only turned her head away slightly, with her eyes upturned a little toward the leaves that were shaking like her own heart. I think I see it all very clearly. He went on in a low and perfectly even voice. You can't be happy over there now, you can't be happy over here now. You've got other wishes, ambitions, dreams, now, and I want you to realize them. I want to help you realize them. All I can. That's all. Jack. She helplessly, protestingly spoke his name in a whisper. But that was all she could do. And he went on. It isn't so strange. What is strange is that I... that I didn't foresee it all. But if I had, he had it firmly. I'd have done it just the same unless by doing it I've really done you more harm than good. No, no, Jack. I came into your world, you wouldn't have to mind. What I had grown indifferent about, you grew to care about. You grew sensed-y while I was growing callous to certain things. He was about to say surface things, but he checked himself. Certain things in life that mean more to a woman than to a man. I would not have married you as you were, I've got to be honest now. At least I thought it necessary that you should be otherwise. Now you've gone beyond me, and now you do not want to marry me as I am. And it is all very natural, and very just. Very slowly her head had dropped until her chin rested hard above the little jeweled cross on her breast. You must tell me if I'm wrong. You don't love me now. Well enough to be happy with me here. He waved one hand toward the straggling little town below them and then toward the lonely mountains. I did not know that we would have to live here, but I know it now. He checked himself, and afterward she recalled the tone of those last words. But then they had no special significance. Am I wrong? He repeated, and then he said hurdly for her face with so piteous. No, you needn't give yourself the pain of saying it in words. I want you to know that I understand that there's nothing in the world I blame you for. Nothing, nothing. If there is any blame at all, it rests on me alone. She broke toward him with a cry then. Jack, no. Jack. She said brokenly, and she caught his hand in both her own and tried to raise it to her lips. But he held her back, and she put her face on his breast and sobbed brokenheartedly. He waited for the praxisum to pass, stroking her hair gently. You mustn't feel that way, little girl. You can't help it. I can't help it. And these things happen all the time everywhere. You don't have to stay here. You can go away and study, and when I can, I'll come to see you and cheer you up. And when you are a great singer, I'll send you flowers and be so proud of you. And I'll say to myself, I helped do that. Try your eyes now. You must go back to the hotel. Your father will be there by this time, and you'll have to be starting home pretty soon. Like a child you obeyed him. But she was so weak and trembling that he put his arm about her to help her down the hill. At the edge of the wood she stopped and turned full toward him. You are so good, she said tremously. So good. Why, you haven't even asked me if there was another. Hale interrupted her shaking his head. If there is, I don't want to know. But there isn't. There isn't, she cried. I don't know what the matter is with me. I hate the tear started again and again she was on the point of breaking down. But Hale checked her. Now, now, he said soothingly. He mustn't. Now it's all right. He mustn't. Her anger at herself helped now. Why, I stood like a silly full tongue-tie. I wanted to say so much, I. You don't need to. Hale said gently. I understand it all. I understand. I believe you do, she said with a sob. Better than I do. Well, all right, little girl. Come on. They should forth into the sunlight and Hale walked rapidly. The strain was getting too much for him and he was anxious to be alone. Without a word or they passed the old school house, a massive new one, and went on. In silence down the street, hitched to a post near the hotel were two gaunt horses with drooping heads, and on one of them was a sight-saddle. Sitting on the steps of the hotel with a pipe in his mouth was the mighty figure of Devil Judd Toliver. He saw them coming, at least he saw Hale coming, and that faraway Hale saw his bushy eyebrows lift in wonder at June. A moment later he rose to his great height without a word. Dad, said June and the trembling boys, don't you know me? The old man stared at her silently and a doubtful smile played about his bearded lips. Hardly, but I reckon it's June. She knew that the world to which Hale belonged would expect her to kiss him, and she made a movement as though she would, but the habit of a lifetime is not broken so easily. She held out her hand and with the other, patted him on the arm as she looked up into his face. Time to be going, June, if we want to get home before dark. All right, Dad, the old man turned to his horse. Hurry up, little gal. In a few minutes they were ready, and the girl looked long into Hale's face when he took her hand. Are you coming over soon? Just as soon as I can. Her lips trembled. Goodbye, she faltered. Goodbye, June, said Hale. From the steps he watched them the giant father slouching in his saddle in the trim figure of the now sadly misplaced girl he wrecked on the awkward pacing mountain beast as encourages the two as a fairy on some prehistoric monster. A horseman was coming up the street behind him and a voice called, Who's that? Hale turned. It was the Honorable Samuel Budd coming home from court. June Tolliver, June Tollifernil, corrected the Honorable Sam with emphasis. The same. The Honorable Sam silently followed the pair for a moment through his big goggles. What do you think of my theory of the latent possibilities of the mountaineer now? I think I know how true it is better than you do, said Hale calmly, and with a grunt the Honorable Sam rode on. Hale watched them as they rode across the plateau, watched them until the gaps swallowed them up, and his heart ached for June. Then he went to his room and there stretched out on his bed, and with his hands clenched behind his head he lay staring upward. Devil Judd Tolendrere had lost none of his maternity. Stoddily, silently, he went ahead, as is the custom of Lordly Man in the mountains, horseback, or a foot, asking no question, answering June's in the fewest words possible. Uncle Billy, the miller, had been complaining of a good deal that spring and Old Hun had rheumatism. Uncle Billy's old mate's sister, who lived in Devil's Fork, had been cooking for him at home since the last taking to bed of June's stepmother. Bub had grown up. Like a hickory sapling. Her cousin Loretta hadn't married, and some folks allowed she'd run away some day with that young buck Fallon. Her cousin Dave had gone off to school that year, had come back a month before and had been shot to the shoulder. He was in Lonesome Cove now. This fact was mentioned in the same matter of fact way as the other happenings. Hale had been raising Cain in Lonesome Cove, cutting things down and tearing him up and playing hell generally. The feud had broken out again, and maybe June couldn't stay at home long. He didn't want her there, with a fighting going on, where at June's heart give a start of gladness that the way would be easy for her to leave when she wished to leave. Things over to Gap was a gond of predation, the old man had been told, while he was waiting for June and Hale that day and Hale not only lost a lot of money, but if things didn't take a rise he would be left head over heels in debt, if that mine over Lonesome Cove didn't pull him out. They were approaching the big pine now, and June was beginning to ache and get sore from the climb. So Hale was in trouble, that was what he meant when he said that, though she could leave the mountains when she pleased, he must stay there, perhaps for good. I'm mighty glad you came home, gal, said the old man, and that you're going to put an end to all this spending us so much money. Jack says you got some money left, but I don't understand it. He says he made an investment for you to triple the money. I ain't never ask him no questions. It was the twix you and him, and at that point none of my business long as you and him can ever get into a marry. He said you was going to marry him this summer, and I wish you'd get tied up right away whilst I'm living, for I don't know when a Winchester might take me off, and I'd die sight easier if I knew you was tied up with a good man like him. Yes, Dad, was all she said, for she had not the heart to tell him the truth, and she knew that Hale never would until the last moment. He must, when he learned that she had failed. Half an hour later she could see the stone chimney of the little cabin in Lonesome Cove. A little further down, several spirals of smoke were visible, rising from unseen houses which were more minor shacks. Her father said that Hale had put up while she was gone. The water of the creek was jet black, now a row of rough wooden houses ran along its edge, the geese cackled a doubtful welcome, a new dog leap barking from the porch and a tall boy sprang after him, both running for the gate. Why, bub! cried June, sliding from her horse and kissing him, and then holding off at arm's length to look into his steady, gray eyes and his blushing face. Take the horses, bub! said old Judd, and June entered the gate while bub stood with the reins in his hand, still speachlessly staring her over from head to foot. There was her garden, thank God, with all her flowers planted a new bed of pansies and one of violets and the border of laurel and bloom, unchanged and weedless. One of Jack Hale meant to take care of it, explained old Judd, and again was ashamed June felt the hurt of her lover's thoughtfulness. When she entered the cabin, the same old rasping, petulant voice called from her bed in one corner, and when June took the shriveled old hand that was limply thrust from the bed closed, the old hag's keen eyes swept her from head to foot, with disapproval. My, but you're aware mighty fine clothes, she croaked enviously. I'd had a new dress for more than five years. And that was the welcome she got. No, said June appeasingly. Well, I'll get one for you myself. I'm much obliged, she whined, but I reckon I can get along. The cough came from the bed in the other corner of the room. Arch Dave, said the old woman, and June walked over to where her cousin's black eye shone hostile at her from the dark. Sorry, Dave, she said, but Dave answered nothing but a song. Had did not put out a hand, he only stared at her in sulky bewilderment, and June went back to listen to the torment of the old woman's planes, until Bub came in. Then, as she turned, she noticed for the first time that a new door had been cut in one side of the cabin, and Bud was following the direction of her eyes. I ain't nobody told you, he said delightfully. Don't we what, Bub? With a whoop, Bub leaped for the side of the door, and reaching up pulled a shining key from between the logs and thrust it into her hands. Go ahead, he said. It's yarn. Samora Jack hails fool doing, said the old woman. Go on, gal, see what he's done. With eager hands she put the key in the lock, and when she pushed open the door she gassed. Another room had been added to the cabin, and the fragrant smell of cedar made her nostrils dilate. Bub pushed by her and threw open the shutters of a window to the low sunlight, and June stood with both hands to her head. It was a room for her, with a dresser, a long mirror, a modern bed in one corner, a work table with a student's lamp on it, a wash stand, and a chest of drawers and a piano. On the walls were pictures, and over the metal stood the one she had first learned to love. Two lovers clasped in each other's arms, and under them the words, in finsoil. Oh, oh, oh, was all she could say, and choking she motioned Bud from the room. When the door closed she threw herself sobbing across the bed. Over at the gap that night Hale sat in his office with a piece of white paper and a lump of black coal on the table in front of him. His foreman had brought the coal to him at day at dusk. He lifted the lump to the light of his lamp, and from the centre of it a mocking evil eye looked back at him. The eye was a piece of shining black flint, and told him that his mind in Lonesome Cove was but a pocket of cannell coal and worth no more than the smoldering lumps in his grate. Then he lifted the piece of white paper. It was his license to marry June. CHAPTER XXIV Very slowly June walked up the Little Creek to the old log, where she had lain so many happy hours. There was no change in leaf, shrub, or tree. And not a stone and a brook had been disturbed. The sun dropped the same arrows down through the leaves, blunting their shining points into tremulous circles on the ground. The waters sang the same happy tune under a dangling feet, and a woodthrush piped the old lay overhead. Woodthrush, June smiled, as she suddenly recristened the bird for herself now. That bird henceforth would be the magic flute to musical June. She leaned back with ears, eyes, and soul awake, and her brain busy. All the way over the mountain on that second homegoing, she had thought of the first and even memories of the memories aroused by that first homegoing came back to her that place where Hale had put his horse into a dead run and had given her that never to be forgotten thrill, and where she had slid from behind to the ground and stormed with tears. When they dropped down into the green gloom of shadow and green leaves toward Lonesome Cove, she had the same feeling that her heart was being clutched by a human hand and that black night had suddenly fallen about her. But this time she knew what it meant. She thought then of the crowded sleeping room, the rough beds and coarse blankets at home, the oil cloth spotted with drippings from a candle that covered the table, the thick plates and cups, the soggy bread and the thick bacon floating in grease, the absence of napkins and eating with knives and fingers, and the noise Bub and her father made drinking their coffee. But then she knew all these things in advance, and the memories of them on her way overhead prepared her for Lonesome Cove. The conditions were definite there. She knew what it would be to face them again. She was facing them all the way, and to her surprise her realities had hurt her less even than they had before. Then had come the same thrill over the garden, and now with that garden and her new room and her panel and her books with Uncle Billy's sister to help do the work and with the little changes the June was daily making in the household, she could live her own life, even over there as long as she pleased, and then she would go out into the world again. But all the time when she was coming over from the gap the way had bristled with accusing memories of hail, even from the chattering creeks, the turns in the road, the sun-dappled bushes and trees and flowers, and when she passed the big pine that rose with such friendly solumenity above her, the pang of it all hurt her heart and kept on hurting her. When she walked in the garden the flowers seemed not to have the same spirit of gladness. It had been a dry season and they drooped for that reason, but the melancholy of them had a sympathetic human quality that depressed her. If she saw a bass-shoot arrow like into deep water, if she heard a bird or saw a tree or a flower whose name she had to recall, she thought of hail. Do what she would. She could not escape the ghost that stalked at her side everywhere. So like a human presence that she felt sometimes a strange desire to turn and speak to it. And in a room that presence was all pervasive. The piano, the furniture, the bits of brick-and-brack, the pictures and books all were eloquent with his thought of her, and every night before she turned out the light, she could not help lifting her eyes to her once favorite picture. Even that hail had remembered. The lovers clasped in each other's arms. Had last alone. Only to see it now is a mocking symbol of his beaten hopes. She had written to thank him for it all, and not yet had he answered her letter. He had said that he was coming over to Lonesome Cove and he had not come. Why should he? On her account? Between them all was over. Why should he? The question was absurd, in her mind, and yet the fact that she had expected him, that she so wanted him was so illogical and so incongruous, and vividly true that it raised her to a sitting posture on the log. And she ran her fingers over her forehead and down her dazed face until her chin was in the hull of her hand, and her startled eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the running water, and yet not seeing it at all. A call, her stepmother's cry, rang up the veen, and she did not hear it. She did not even hear a bump coming through the underbrush a few minutes later. And when he half angrily shouted her name at the end of the vista downstream, once he could see her she lifted her head from a dream so deep that in it all her senses had, for the moment, been wholly lost. Come on, he shouted. She had forgotten there was a bean stringing, the house that day, and she slipped slowly off the log and went down the path gathering herself together as she went, and making no answer to the indignant bub who turned and stalked ahead of her, back to the house. At the barnyard gate her father stopped her. He looked worried. Jack Hale just been over here. June caught her breath sharply. Has he gone? The old man was watching her and she felt it. Yeah, he was in a hurry and nobody knowed where he was. He just came over, he said, to tell me, to tell you that you could go back to New York and keep on with your singing, doing whatever you'll please. He knowed I didn't want you here when this war starts for a finish, as it's going to go mighty soon now. He says he ain't quite ready to get married yet. I'm afraid he's in trouble. Trouble? I told you the other day he's lost all his money, but he says you got enough to keep you going for some time. I don't see why you don't get married right now and live over in the gap. June colored in with silent. Oh, said the old man quickly. You ain't ready neither. He studied her with narrowing eyes and threw a puzzled frown. But I reckon it's all right if you're going to get married sometime. What's all right, dad? The old man checked himself. Everything, he said shortly. But don't you make a fool of yourself with a good man like Jack Hale? And wondering, June was silent. The truth was that the old man had wormed out of Hale an admission of the kindly duplicity the latter practiced on him in June. And he had given his word to Hale. That he would not tell June. He didn't understand why Hale should have so insisted on that promise. For it was all right that Hale should openly do what he pleased for the girl he was going to marry. But he had given his word. So he turned away. But his frown stayed where it was. June went on puzzled. Of course she knew that her father was withholding something. And she knew, too, that he would tell her only in his own good time. But she could go away when she pleased. That was the comfort. And with that thought she stopped suddenly at the corner of the garden. She could see Hale on his big black horse climbing the spur. Once it had always been his custom to stop on top of it to rest his horse and turn to look back at her. And she always waited to wave him good-bye. She wondered if he would do it now. And while she looked and waited, the beating of her heart quick and nervously. But he rode straight on without stopping or turning his head. And June felt strangely bereaved and resentful. And the comfort of the moment before was suddenly gone. She could hear the voices of the guests and the porch around the corner of the house. There was an ordeal for her around there. And she went on. Loretta and Loretta's mother were there. The old hun and several wives and daughters of Tolerber adherence from a deadwood creek. And below Uncle Billy's mill. June knew that the bean-stringing was simply excused for them to be there. For she could not remember that so many had ever gathered there before at that function in the spring, at corn-cutting in the autumn, or sore-gum making time or the log-raising or quilting parties. And she well knew the motive of these many and the curiosity of all, say, perhaps Loretta and the old miller's wife. And June was prepared for them. She had borrowed a gown from her stepmother of purple creation of homespun. She had shaken down her beautiful hair and drawn it at low over a browse and arranged it behind her after the fashion of mountain women. And when she went up the steps of the porch, she was outwardly to the eye one of them except for the leather belt about her slenderly full waist. Her black silk stockings and the little fern shoes on her dainty feet. She smiled inwardly when she saw the same old wave of disappointment sweep across the faces of the mall. It was not necessary to shake hands but unthinkingly she did. And the women sat in their chairs as she went from one to the other and each gave her a limp hand and a grave outing. Though each paid an unconscious tribute to a vague something about her. By wiping that hand on her apron first. Very quietly and naturally she took a low chair, piled beans on her lap, and, as one of them, went to work. Nobody looked at her at first until O'Hun broke the silence. You know, I ain't lost a speck of your good looks, Junie. Jun laughed without a flesh. She would have read into the roots of her hair two years before. I'm feeling right pert, thank ye. She said, dropping consciously into the vernacular. But there was something in her voice that was vaguely felt by all as a part of the universal strangeness. That was in her wreck-bearing, her proud head, her deep eyes, that looked so straight into their own as strangeness that was in that belt, those stockings, and those shoes, inconspicuous as they were to which she saw every eye in time, covertly wandering as to tangible symbols of a mystery that was beyond their kin. O'Hun and the stepmother alone talked at first, and the others, even Loretta, said never a word. Jack Hale must have been in a mighty big hurry, quavered the old stepmother. Junie ain't going to be with us for long, I'm fearing him. Without looking up, Jun knew the wireless significance of the speech was going around from eye to eye. But calmly she pulled her thread through a green pod, and said calmly with a little enigmatical shake of her head. I don't know. I don't know. Young Dave's mother was encouraged, and all her efforts at good humour could not quite draw the string of a spiteful plate from her voice. I reckon she'd never get away if my boy Dave had any say in of it. There was a subdued titter at this, but Bub had come in from the stable and had dropped on the edge of the porch. He broke in hotly. He'd just let Jun alone, Aunt Dilly. You'll have your hands full if you keep your eye on Lottie there. Already, when somebody was saying something about the feud, as Jun came around the corner her quick eye had seen Loretta bend her head swiftly over her work to hide the flush of her face. Now Loretta turned scarlet as her stepmother spoke severely. You hush, Bub! And Bub rose and stalked into the house. Aunt Dilly was leaning back in her chair gasping, and consternation smoked the group. Jun rose suddenly with her string of dangling beans. I haven't shown you my room, Loretta. Don't you want to see it? Come on, all of you. She added to the girls, and then Loretta with one swift look of gratitude rose shyly and troops shyly within where they looked in wide-mouth wonder at the marvellous things that room contained. The old women followed to share sight of the miracle, and all stood looking from one thing to another, some with their hands behind them as though they thwarted the temptation to touch, and all saying merely, my, my. None of them had ever seen a piano before, and Jun must play the shiny contraption, and sing a song. It was only curiosity and astonishment that she evoked when her swift fingers began running over the keys from one end of the board to the other, astonishment at the gymnastic quality of the performance, and only astonishment when her lovely voice set the very walls with a little room to vibrating with their dramatic love song that was about as intelligible to them as a problem in Calculus and Jun flushed, and then smiled with quick understanding at the dry comment that rose from Antille behind. She surely can't horror some! She couldn't play Sour Wood Mountain on the piano nor Ginny get around, nor soap suds over the fence, but with a sudden inspiration she went back to an old hymn that they all knew, and at the end she won the tribute of an odd silence that made them file back to the beans on the porch. Loretta lingered for a moment, and when Jun closed the piano and the two girls went into the main room a tall figure entering stooped in the door and stared at Jun without speaking. Why, howdy, Uncle Roof, said Loretta. This is Jun. You didn't know her, did you? The man laughed. Something in Jun's bearing made him take off his hat. He came forward to shake hands and Jun looked up into a pair of bold black eyes that stirred within her again the vague fears of her childhood. She had been afraid of him when she was a child, and it was the old fear aroused that made her recall him by his eyes now. His beard was gone and he was much changed. She trembled when she shook hands with him and she did not call him by his name. Old Judd came in, and a moment later the two men and Bub sat on the porch while the women worked, and when Jun rose again to go indoors, she felt the newcomer's bold eyes take her slowly in from head to foot. She turned crimson. This was the terror among the Tolliver's bad roof. Came back from the West to take part in the feud. He saw the belt and the stockings and the shoes, the white column of her throat, and the proud set of her gold-crowned head. He knew what they meant. He made her feel that he knew. And later he managed to catch her eyes once with an amused half contemptuous glance at the simple unravelled folk about them that said plainly how well he knew they too were set apart from them. And she shrank fearfully from the comradeship that the glance implied and would look at him no more. He knew everything that was going on in the mountains. He had come back ready for business, he said. When he made ready to go Jun went to her room and stayed there. But she heard him say to her father that he was going over to the Gap and with a laugh that chilled her soul. Going over to kill me a policeman. And their father warned gruffly. You'd better keep away from there. You don't understand them fellas. And she heard Roof's brutal laugh again and as he rode into the creek his horse stumbled and she saw him cut cruelly at the poor beast's ears with the rawhide quirt that he carried. She was glad when all went home in the only ray of sunlight in the day, for her radiated from Uncle Billy's face when at sunset he came to take Old Hun home. The Old Miller was one unchanged soul to her and that he was the one soul that could see no change in June. He called her baby in the old way and he talked to her now as he had talked to her as a child. He took her aside to ask if she knew that Hale had got his license to marry. And when she shook her head his round red face lighted up with the benediction of a rising sun. Well, that's what he's done, baby, and he's asked me to marry. He added, with boys' pride, he's asked me. And June choked her eyes filled and she was dumb, but Uncle Billy could not see that it meant distress and not joy. He just put her arm around her and whispered, I told a soul, baby, not a soul. She went to bed and to sleep with Hale's face in the dream mist of her brain. And Uncle Billy's and the bold black eyes of bad roof taller, all fused, blurred, indistinguishable. Then suddenly Roof's words struck that brain, word by word, like the clanging terror of a frightened bell. I'm going to kill me, O policeman. And with the last word it seemed she sprang up right in bed clutching the coverlet conventionally. Daylight was showing grief through her window. She heard a swift step up the steps across the porch, the rattle of the door chain. Her father's quick call, then the rumble of two men's voices. And she knew as well what had happened, as though she had heard every word they uttered. Roof had killed him, a policeman, perhaps John Hale. And with terror clutching her heart, she sprang to the floor. And as she dropped the old purple gown over her shoulders, she heard the scurry of feet across the back porch, feet that ramped swiftly but cautiously, and left the sound of them at the edge of the woods. She heard the back door close softly, the creaking of the bed as her father lay down again, and then a sudden splashing in the creek. Kneeling at the window, she saw a strange horseman, pushing toward the gate where one through himself from his saddle strode swiftly toward the steps, and her lips unconsciously made soft little and articulate cries of joy. For the stern gray face under the hat of the man was the face of John Hale. After him pushed other men, fully armed whom he motioned to either side of the cabin, to the rear. By his side was Bob Berkeley, and behind him was a red-headed Fallon, whom she well remembered. Within twenty feet she was looking into that gray face when the set lips of it opened in a loud command. Hello. She heard her father's bed creak again, again the rattle of the door chain, and then old Judd stepped on the porch with a revolver in each hand. Hello? He answered sternly. Judd said Hale sharply, and June had never heard that tone from him before. A man with a black mustache killed one of our men over in the gap yesterday, and we tracked him over here. There's his horse, and we saw him go into that door. We want them. Do you know who the filler is? Ask old Judd calmly. No, Hale said quickly, and then with equal calm. It was my brother. And the old man's mouth closed like a vice. Had the last word been a stone striking against his ear, Hale could hardly have been more stunned. Again he called and almost gently. What's the rear there? And then gently he turned to devil Judd. Judd, your brother shot a man at the gap without excuse or warning. He was an officer and a friend of mine, but if he were a stranger we would want him just the same. Is he here? Judd looked at the red-headed man behind Hale. Oh, you turned on the felon side now, have you? He said contemptuously. Is he here? repeated Hale. Yes, you can't have him. Without a move toward his pistol, Hale stepped forward and June saw her father's big right hand tighten on his huge pistol, and with a low cry she sprang to her feet. I'm an officer of the law, Hale said. Stand aside, Judd. Bud leaped to the door with a winchester, his eyes wild and his face white. Watch out, men! Hale called, and as the men raised their guns there was a shriek inside the cabin, and June stood at Bub's side, barefoot, her hair tumbled about her shoulders, and her hand clutching the little cross at her throat. Stop! She shrieked. He isn't here. He's gone. For a moment his sudden sickness smote Hale's face, then devil Judd's roost splashed to him and, willing, he sprang to the ground. Quick, he shouted with a sweep of his hand right and left, up those hollows. Lead those horses up to the pine and wait. Quick! Already the men were running as he directed, and Hale, followed by Bob and the felon, rashed around the corner of the house. Old Judd's nostrils were quivering, and with his pistols dangling in his hand he walked to the gate, listening to the sounds of the pursuit. They'll never catch him, he said, coming back and then he dropped into a chair and sat in silence a long time. June reappeared, her face still white and her temples throbbing, for the sun was rising on days of darkness for her. Devil Judd did not even look at her. I reckon you ain't going to marry John Hale. No, dad, said June.