urprise at the vision and then with a lordly yet obsequious wave of his
hand, led her to a table over in a corner where no one was sitting. Four
young men came in rather boisterously and made for her table. She lifted
her calm eyes at them so haughtily that the one in front halted with
sudden embarrassment and they all swerved to another table from which
they stared at her surreptitiously. Perhaps she was mistaken for the
comic-opera star whose brilliant picture she had seen on a bill board in
front of the "opera house." Well, she had the voice and she might
have been and she might yet be--and if she were, this would be the
distinction that would be shown her. And, still as it was she was
greatly pleased.

At four o'clock she started for the hills. In half an hour she was
dropping down a winding ravine along a rock-lashing stream with those
hills so close to the car on either side that only now and then could
she see the tops of them. Through the window the keen air came from the
very lungs of them, freighted with the coolness of shadows, the scent of
damp earth and the faint fragrance of wild flowers, and her soul leaped
to meet them. The mountain sides were showered with pink and white
laurel (she used to call it "ivy") and the rhododendrons (she used to
call them "laurel") were just beginning to blossom--they were her old
and fast friends--mountain, shadow, the wet earth and its pure breath,
and tree, plant and flower; she had not forgotten them, and it was good
to come back to them. Once she saw an overshot water-wheel on the bank
of the rushing little stream and she thought of Uncle Billy; she smiled
and the smile stopped short--she was going back to other things as well.
The train had creaked by a log-cabin set in the hillside and then past
another and another; and always there were two or three ragged children
in the door and a haggard unkempt woman peering over their shoulders.
How lonely those cabins looked and how desolate the life they suggested
to her now--NOW! The first station she came to after the train had
wound down the long ravine to the valley level again was crowded with
mountaineers. There a wedding party got aboard with a great deal of
laughter, chaffing and noise, and all three went on within and without
the train while it was waiting. A sudden thought stunned her like a
lightning stroke. They were HER people out there on the platform and
inside the car ahead--those rough men in slouch hats, jeans