last of them. She had stood, during an irritating wait, at
the water-tower, and now as she moved slowly forward again she heard
the hurry of feet behind her and she turned to look into the eager,
wondering 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.

XXII

June sat in the little 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 incongruously 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 daintiness made him
unconsciously sit quite far away from her. The little fairy-cross was
still at her throat, but a tiny diamond gleamed from each end of it and
from the centre, 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 close suddenly tight and 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