How lonely those
cabins looked and how desolate the life they suggested to her now-
-NOW! The first station she came to after the train had wound down
the long ravine to the valley level again was crowded with
mountaineers. There a wedding party got aboard with a great deal
of laughter, chaffing and noise, and all three went on within and
without the train while it was waiting. A sudden thought stunned
her like a lightning stroke. They were HER people out there on the
platform and inside the car ahead--those rough men in slouch hats,
jeans and cowhide boots, their mouths stained with tobacco juice,
their cheeks and eyes on fire with moonshine, and those women in
poke-bonnets with their sad, worn, patient faces on which the
sympathetic good cheer and joy of the moment sat so strangely. She
noticed their rough shoes and their homespun gowns that made their
figures all alike and shapeless, with a vivid awakening of early
memories. She might have been one of those narrow-lived girls
outside, or that bride within had it not been for Jack--Hale. She
finished the name in her own mind and she was conscious that she
had.
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