scovered already that certain theories of human relations are not
soundly established in fact.

She turned at last in her seat. The Limited's whistle had shrilled for
a stop. At the next stop--she wondered what lay in store for her just
beyond the next stop. While she dwelt mentally upon this, her hands were
gathering up some few odds and ends of her belongings on the berth.

Across the aisle a large, smooth-faced young man watched her with covert
admiration. When she had settled back with bag and suitcase locked and
strapped on the opposite seat and was hatted and gloved, he leaned over
and addressed her genially.

"Getting off at Hopyard? Happen to be going out to Roaring Springs?"

Miss Benton's gray eyes rested impersonally on the top of his head,
traveled slowly down over the trim front of his blue serge to the
polished tan Oxfords on his feet, and there was not in eyes or on
countenance the slightest sign that she saw or heard him. The large
young man flushed a vivid red.

Miss Benton was partly amused, partly provoked. The large young man had
been her vis-a-vis at dinner the day before and at breakfast that
morning. He had evinced a yearning for conversation each time, but it
had been diplomatically confined to salt and other condiments, the
weather and the scenery. Miss Benton had no objection to young men in
general, quite the contrary. But she did not consider it quite the thing
to countenance every amiable stranger.

Within a few minutes the porter came for her things, and the blast of
the Limited's whistle warned her that it was time to leave the train.
Ten minutes later the Limited was a vanishing object down an aisle
slashed through a forest of great trees, and Miss Estella Benton stood
on the plank platform of Hopyard station. Northward stretched a flat,
unlovely vista of fire-blackened stumps. Southward, along track and
siding, ranged a single row of buildings, a grocery store, a shanty with
a huge sign proclaiming that it was a bank, dwelling, hotel and
blacksmith shop whence arose the clang of hammered iron. A dirt road ran
between town and station, with hitching posts at which farmers' nags
stood dispiritedly in harness.

To the Westerner such spots are common enough; he sees them not as
fixtures, but as places in a stage of transformation. By every side
track and telegraph station on every transcontinental line they spring
up, centers of productive activity, growing into orderly towns and
fin