Her home was little more than just such a cabin as the desolate ones that stirred her pity when she swept by them. She thought of how she felt when she had first gone to Lonesome Cove after a few months at the Gap, and she shuddered to think how she would feel now. She was getting restless by this time and aimlessly she got up and walked to the front of the car and back again to her seat, hardly noticing that the other occupants were staring at her with some wonder. She sat down for a few minutes and then she went to the rear and stood outside on the platform, clutching a brass rod of the railing and looking back on the dropping darkness in which the hills seemed to be rushing together far behind as the train crashed on with its wake of spark-lit rolling smoke. A cinder stung her face, and when she lifted her hand to the spot, she saw that her glove was black with grime. With a little shiver of disgust she went back to her seat and with her face to the blackness rushing past her window she sat brooding--brooding. Why had Hale not met her? He had said he would and she had written him when she was coming and had telegraphed him at the station in New York when she started. Perhaps he HAD changed. She recalled that even his letters had grown less frequent, shorter, more hurried the past year--well, he should have his chance. Always, however, her mind kept going back to the people at the station and to her people in the mountains. They were the same, she kept repeating to herself--the very same and she was one of them. And always she kept thinking of her first trip to Lonesome Cove after her awakening and of what her next would be. That first time Hale had made her go back as she had left, in home-spun, sun-bonnet and brogans. There was the same reason why she should go back that way now as then--would Hale insist that she should now? She almost laughed aloud at the thought. She knew that she would refuse and she knew that his reason would not appeal to her now--she no longer cared what her neighbours and kinspeople might think and say. The porter paused at her seat. “How much longer is it?” she asked. “Half an hour, Miss.” June went to wash her face and hands, and when she came back to her seat a great glare shone through the windows on the other side of the car. It was the furnace, a “run” was on and she could see the streams of white molten metal racing down the narrow channels of sand to their narrow beds on either side. The whistle shrieked ahead for the Gap and she nerved herself with a prophetic sense of vague trouble at hand. * * * * * * *