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 cheer 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-lived girls outside, or that bride within had it not been for
Jack--Hale. She finished the name in her own mind and 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 heaven 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 step-mother 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 of the railing and looking back on the dropping
darkness in which the hills seemed to be rushing together far behind as
the train crashed on with its wake of spark-lit 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 g