re beginning to file out of the car, and the train was under the
shadow of the snow-covered sheds in the station of the state capital.
Cynthia recognized the place, though it was cold and bare and very
different in appearance from what it had been on the summer's evening
when she had come into it with her father. That, in effect, had been her
first glimpse of the world, and well she recalled the thrill it had given
her. The joy of such things was gone now, the rapture of holidays and new
sights. These were over, so she told herself. Sorrow had quenched the
thrills forever.

The kind conductor led her to the eating room, and when she would not eat
his concern drew greater than ever. He took a strange interest in this
young lady who had such a face and such eyes. He pointed her out to his
friend the Truro conductor, and gave him some sandwiches and fruit which
he himself had bought, with instructions to press them on her during the
afternoon.

Cynthia could not eat. She hated this place, with its memories. Hated it,
too, as a mart where men were bought and sold, for the wording of those
articles ran in her head as though some priest of evil were chanting them
in her ears. She did not remember then the sweeter aspect of the old
town, its pretty homes set among their shaded gardens--homes full of good
and kindly people. State House affairs were far removed from most of
these, and the sickness and corruption of the body politic. And this
political corruption, had she known it, was no worse than that of the
other states in the wide Union: not so bad, indeed, as many, though this
was small comfort. No comfort at all to Cynthia, who did not think of it.

After a while she rose and followed the new conductor to the Truro train,
glad to leave the capital behind her. She was going to the hills--to the
mountains. They, in truth, could not change, though the seasons passed
over them, hot and cold, wet and dry. They were immutable in their
goodness. Presently she saw them, the lower ones: the waters of the
little stream beside her broke the black bonds of ice and raced over the
rapids; the engine was puffing and groaning on the grade. Then the sun
crept out, slowly, from the indefinable margin of vapor that hung massed
over the low country.

Yes, she had come to the hills. Up and up climbed the train, through the
little white villages in the valley nooks, banked with whiter snow;
through the narrow gorges,--sometimes hanging over