he explorer, for I'm not the
first one to see them. A few thin generations of people have stared at
these hills--and much the hills have done for them! Melora Meigs is the
child of these mountains; and Melora's sense of beauty is amply
expressed in the Orthodox church in Hebron. This landscape, I assure
you"--she smiled--"hasn't made good. So much for the view. It's no use
to me, absolutely no use. I give you full and free leave to take it away
with you if you want it. And I don't think the house is much better. But
I'm afraid I shall have to keep that for Melora Meigs and me to live
in." It was her old smile. The bitterness was all in the words. No, it
was not bitterness, precisely, for it was fundamentally as impersonal as
criticism can be. You would have thought that the mountains were
low-brows. I forebore to mention her ancestors who had lived here: it
would have seemed like quibbling. They had created the situation; but
they had only in the most literal sense created her.

"Why don't you get out?"

"I simply haven't money enough to live anywhere else. Not money enough
for a hall bedroom. This place belongs to me. The taxes are nothing. The
good farming land that went with it was sold long since. And I'm afraid
I haven't the strength to go out and work for a living. I'm very
ineffectual, besides. What could I do even if health returned to me?
I've decided it's more decent to stay here and die on three dollars a
year than to sink my capital in learning stenography."

"You could, I suppose, be a companion." Of course I did not mean it, but
she took it up very seriously.

"The people who want companions wouldn't want me. And the one thing this
place gives me is freedom--freedom to hate it, to see it intelligently
for what it is. I couldn't afford my blessed hatreds if I were a
companion. And there's no money in it, so that I couldn't even plan for
release. It simply wouldn't do."

Well, of course it wouldn't do. I had never thought it would. I tried
another opening.

"When is Withrow coming back?"

"I don't know. I haven't heard from him." She might have been telling a
squirrel that she didn't know where the other squirrel's nuts were.

"He has been far beyond civilization, I know. But I dare say he'll be
back soon. I hope you won't put him in the barn. I don't mind, of
course, but his feelings might be hurt."

"I shall certainly not let him come," she retorted. "He would have the
grace to ask first, you kn