--how
could she?--and she would get over it, and then came the sharp stab of
a doubt--would he want her to get over it? Frankly and with wonder he
confessed to himself that he did not know--he did not know. But again,
why bother? He had meant to educate her, anyhow. That was the first
step--no matter what happened. June must go out into the world to
school. He would have plenty of money. Her father would not object, and
June need never know. He could include for her an interest in her own
father's coal lands that he meant to buy, and she could think that it
was her own money that she was using. So, with a sudden rush of gladness
from his brain to his heart, he recklessly yoked himself, then and
there, under all responsibility for that young life and the eager,
sensitive soul that already lighted it so radiantly.

And June? Her nature had opened precisely as had bud and flower that
spring. The Mother of Magicians had touched her as impartially as she
had touched them with fairy wand, and as unconsciously the little girl
had answered as a young dove to any cooing mate. With this Hale did not
reckon, and this June could not know. For a while, that night, she lay
in a delicious tremor, listening to the bird-like chorus of the little
frogs in the marsh, the booming of the big ones in the mill-pond, the
water pouring over the dam with the sound of a low wind, and, as had
all the sleeping things of the earth about her, she, too, sank to happy
sleep.

XVI

The in-sweep of the outside world was broadening its current now. The
improvement company had been formed to encourage the growth of the town.
A safe was put in the back part of a furniture store behind a wooden
partition and a bank was started. Up through the Gap and toward
Kentucky, more entries were driven into the coal, and on the Virginia
side were signs of stripping for iron ore. A furnace was coming in just
as soon as the railroad could bring it in, and the railroad was pushing
ahead with genuine vigor. Speculators were trooping in and the town had
been divided off into lots--a few of which had already changed hands.
One agent had brought in a big steel safe and a tent and was buying coal
lands right and left. More young men drifted in from all points of the
compass. A tent-hotel was put at the foot of Imboden Hill, and of nights
there were under it much poker and song. The lilt of a definite optimism
was in every man's step and the light of hope was in ever