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 of 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 Hale threw his reins to the man who was nearest,
hardly seeing who he was, and climbed aboard. He wore a slouched hat
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 woollen shirt, and a blue
handkerchief--none too clean--was loosely tied about his sun-scorched
column of a throat; 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 lights thick as mist veiled Powell's Mountain. Below,
the valley was still flooded with yellow sunlight which lay along the
mountain sides and was streaked here and there with the long shadow of
a deep ravine. The beech trunks on Imboden Hill gleamed in it like white
bodies 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 hills
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.

* * * * * * *

And June--June had seen the change in Hale. The first year he had come
often to New York to see her and they had gone to the theatre and the
opera, and June was pleased to play the part of heroine in what was such
a real romance to the other girls in school and she was proud of Hale.
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 be