will _not_
run."

Still the idea kept recurring to her. It promised relief from the hurt
of averted faces and coolness where she had a right to expect sympathy
and friendship. She had never been more than two hundred miles from
Granville in her life. But she knew that a vast, rich land spread
south and west. She was human and thoroughly feminine; loneliness
appalled her, and she had never suffered as Granville at large was
making her suffer.

The legal notice of the bequest was mailed to her. She tore up the
letter and threw it in the fire as if it were some poisonous thing.
The idea of accepting his money stirred her to a perfect frenzy. That
was piling it up.

All during the next week she worked at her machine in the office of the
furniture company, keeping strictly to herself, doing her work
impassively, efficiently, betraying no sign of the feelings that
sometimes rose up, the despairing protest and angry rebellion against
the dubious position she was in through no fault of her own. She swore
she would not leave Granville, and it galled her to stay. It was a
losing fight, and she knew it even if she did not admit the fact. If
she could have poured the whole miserable tale into some sympathetic
ear she would have felt better, and each day would have seemed less
hard. But there was no such ear. Her friends kept away.

Saturday of the second week her pay envelope contained a brief notice
that the firm no longer required her services. There was no
explanation, only perfunctory regrets; and, truth to tell, Hazel cared
little to know the real cause. Any one of a number of reasons might
have been sufficient. But she realized how those who knew her would
take it, what cause they would ascribe. It did not matter, though.
The very worst, she reasoned, could not be so bad as what had already
happened--could be no more disagreeable than the things she had endured
in the past two weeks. Losing a position was a trifle. But it set her
thinking again.

"It doesn't seem to be a case of flight," she reflected on her way
home, "so much as a case of being frozen out, compelled to go. I can't
stay here and be idle. I have to work in order to live. Well, I'm not
gone yet."

She stopped at a news stand and bought the evening papers. Up in the
top rack of the stand the big heads of an assorted lot of Western
papers caught her eye. She bought two or three on the impulse of the
moment, without any definite pur