that it was one of the demands of that new life to
see little and be astonished at nothing, and Helen and Hale surprised in
turn at her unconcern, little suspected the effort her self-suppression
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 to see if Hale could be joking with her.

"It's all true, June," Helen would say. "You must go there some day.
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 Rumour had gone ahead of June. Hale had found her dashing
about the mountains on the back of a wild bull, said rumour. She was as
beautiful as Europa, was of pure English descent and spoke the language
of Shakespeare--the Hon. Sam 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
here doubtless was the faint tracery of Miss Anne Saunder's natural
suspicions. And there 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.

XX

The boom started after its 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 Alleghanies, emissaries of
New York capital were pouring into the hills, the tide-water 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 gr