And Rumour had gone ahead
of June. Hale had found her dashing about the mountains on the
back of a wild bull, said rumour. She was as beautiful as Europa,
was of pure English descent and spoke the language of Shakespeare-
-the Hon. Sam Budd's hand was patent in this. She had saved Hale's
life from moonshiners and while he was really in love with her, he
was pretending to educate her out of gratitude--and here doubtless
was the faint tracery of Miss Anne Saunder's natural suspicions.
And there Hale left her under the eye of his sister--left her to
absorb another new life like a thirsty plant and come back to the
mountains to make his head swim with new witcheries.
XX
The boom started after its shadow through the hills now, and Hale
watched it sweep toward him with grim satisfaction at the
fulfilment of his own prophecy and with disgust that, by the
irony of fate, it should come from the very quarters where years
before he had played the maddening part of lunatic at large. The
avalanche was sweeping southward; Pennsylvania was creeping down
the Alleghanies, emissaries of New York capital were pouring into
the hills, the tide-water of Virginia and the Bluegrass region of
Kentucky were sending in their best blood and youth, and friends
of the helmeted Englishmen were hurrying over the seas.
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