rop
his leaning prejudices by contrasting her scant print gown, her slat
sunbonnet, and cowhide shoes with the apparel of the humblest in the
village which they were approaching.

CHAPTER III

A PEAK IN DARIEN

So walking, and so desultorily talking, they came out on a noble white
highway that wound for miles along the bluffy edge of the upland
overlooking the valley upon the one side, fronted by handsome residences
on the other.

It was Johnnie's first view of a big valley, a river, or a city. She had
seen the shoestring creek bottoms between the endless mountains among
which she was born and bred, the high-hung, cup-like depressions of
their inner fastnesses; she was used to the cool, clear, boulder-checked
mountain creeks that fight their way down those steeps like an armed man
beating off assailants at every turn; she had been taken a number of
times to Bledsoe, the tiny settlement at the foot of Unaka Old Bald,
where there were two stores, a blacksmith shop, the post-office and
the church.

Below her, now beginning to glow in the evening light, opened out one of
the finest valleys of the southern Appalachees. Lapped in it, far off,
shrouded with rosy mist which she did not identify as transmuted coal
smoke, a city lay, fretted with spires, already sparkling with electric
lights, set like a glittering boss of jewels in the broad curve of a
shining river.

Directly down the steep at their feet was the cotton-mill town, a suburb
clustered about a half-dozen great factories, whose long rows of lighted
windows defined their black bulk. There was a stream here, too; a small,
sluggish thing that flowed from tank to tank among the factories,
spanned by numerous handrails, bridged in one place for the wagon-road
to cross. Mills, valley, town, distant rimming mountains, river and
creek, glowed and pulsed, dissolved and relimned themselves in the
uprolling glory of sunset.

"Oh, wait for me a minute, Shade," pleaded the girl, pulling off her
sunbonnet.... "I want to look.... Never in my life did I see anything
so sightly!"

"Good land!" laughed the man, with a note of impatience in his voice.
"You and me was raised on mountain scenery, as a body may say. I should
think we'd both had enough of it to last us."

"But this--this is different," groped Johnnie, trying to explain the
emotions that possessed her. "Look at that big settlement over yon. I
reckon it's a city. It must be Watauga. It looks like the--the m