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.
* * * * * * *
At the station Hale had paced the platform. He looked at his watch
to see whether he might have time to run up to the furnace, half a
mile away, and board the train there. He thought he had and he was
about to start when the shriek of the coming engine rose beyond
the low hills in Wild Cat Valley, echoed along Powell's Mountain
and broke against the wrinkled breast of the Cumberland. On it
came, and in plain sight it stopped suddenly to take water, and
Hale cursed it silently and recalled viciously that when he was in
a hurry to arrive anywhere, the water-tower was always on the
wrong side of the station.
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