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 mid-day dinner time for something to eat, so she lay abed, picked
a breakfast from the menu, which was spotted, dirty and meagre in
offerings, and had it brought to her room. Early in the afternoon she
issued forth into the sunlight, and started toward Imboden Hill. It was
very beautiful and soul-comforting--the warm air, the luxuriantly wooded
hills, with their shades of green that told her where poplar 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 north-eastward
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 street 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 creaked with its weight of 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 air deterred her. There was Hale's little frame cottage and
his name, half washed out, was over the wing that was still his office.
Past that she went, with a passing temptation to look within, and toward
the old school-house. 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 Rosy," 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 beech tree where she had built her playhouse, and memory
led her from the path toward it. She had not climbed a hill for