out the side door and, reaching the main
street, struck straight for the Gap, holding the big road for the
Unakas. To her left was the white highway that ran along above the
valley, and that Palace of Pleasure which had seemed a wonder and a
mystery to her one year gone. To-day she gave no thought to the sight of
river and valley and town, except to look back once at the roofs and
reflect that, among all the people housed there in sight of her, there
were surely those who knew the secret of Gray Stoddard's
disappearance--who could tell her if they would where to search for him.
Somehow, the thought made her feel very small and alone and unfriended.
With its discouragement came that dogged persistence that was
characteristic of the girl. She set her trembling lip and went over her
plans resolutely, methodically. Deanie and Laurella were safe to be well
looked after in her absence. Mavity Bence and Mandy would care for them
tenderly. And there was the bankbook. If Johnnie knew her mother, the
household back there would not lack, either for assistance or
material matters.

And now the present enterprise began to shape itself in her mind. A
practical creature, she depended from the first on getting a lift from
time to time. Yet Johnnie knew better than another the vast, silent,
secret network of hate that draws about the victim in a mountain
vendetta. If the spirit of feud was aroused against the mill owners, if
the Groners and Dawsons had been able to enlist their kin and clan, she
was well aware that the man or woman who gave her smiling information as
to ways and means, might, the hour before, have looked on Gray Stoddard
lying dead, or sat in the council which planned to kill him. Thus she
walked warily, and dared ask from none directions or help. She was not
yet in her own region, these lower ridges lying between two lines of
railway, which, from the mountaineer's point of view, contaminated them
and gave them a tincture of the valley and the Settlement.

Noon came and passed. She was very weary. Factory life had told on her
physically, and the recent distress of mind added its devitalizing
influence. There was a desperate flagging of the muscles weakened by
disuse and an unhealthy indoor life.

"I wonder can I ever make it?" she questioned herself. Then swiftly,
"I've got to--I've got to."

Her eye roved toward a cabin on the slope above. There lived a man by
the name of Straley, but he was a cousin to Lura Dawso