s
right arm still bound to his side, his bushy beard low on his breast,
June and Bub on horseback behind him, the rest strung out behind them,
and in a wagon at the end, with all her household effects, the little
old woman in black who would wait no longer for the Red Fox to arise
from the dead. Loretta alone was missing. She was on her way with young
Buck Falin to the railroad on the other side of the mountains. Between
them not a living soul disturbed the dead stillness of Lonesome Cove.

XXXII

All winter the cabin in Lonesome Cove slept through rain and sleet and
snow, and no foot passed its threshold. Winter broke, floods came and
warm sunshine. A pale green light stole through the trees, shy, ethereal
and so like a mist that it seemed at any moment on the point of floating
upward. Colour came with the wild flowers and song with the wood-thrush.
Squirrels played on the tree-trunks like mischievous children, the
brooks sang like happy human voices through the tremulous underworld and
woodpeckers hammered out the joy of spring, but the awakening only made
the desolate cabin lonelier still. After three warm days in March, Uncle
Billy, the miller, rode up the creek with a hoe over his shoulder--he
had promised this to Hale--for his labour of love in June's garden.
Weeping April passed, May came with rosy face uplifted, and with
the birth of June the laurel emptied its pink-flecked cups and the
rhododendron blazed the way for the summer's coming with white stars.

Back to the hills came Hale then, and with all their rich beauty they
were as desolate as when he left them bare with winter, for his mission
had miserably failed. His train creaked and twisted around the benches
of the mountains, and up and down ravines into the hills. The smoke
rolled in as usual through the windows and doors. There was the same
crowd of children, slatternly women and tobacco-spitting men in the
dirty day-coaches, and Hale sat among them--for a Pullman was no longer
attached to the train that ran to the Gap. As he neared the bulk
of Powell's mountain and ran along its mighty flank, he passed the
ore-mines. At each one the commissary was closed, the cheap, dingy
little houses stood empty on the hillsides, and every now and then he
would see a tipple and an empty car, left as it was after dumping its
last load of red ore. On the right, as he approached the station, the
big furnace stood like a dead giant, still and smokeless, and the