There had never been such a June in Eagle County.

　　Usually it was a month of moods, with abruptalternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat; thisyear, day followed day in a sequence of temperatebeauty. Every morning a breeze blew steadily from thehills. Toward noon it built up great canopies ofwhite cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields andwoods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again,and the western light rained its unobstructedbrightness on the valley.

　　On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridgeabove a sunlit hollow, her face pressed to the earthand the warm currents of the grass running through her.

　　Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch laidits frail white flowers and blue-green leaves againstthe sky. Just beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurledbetween the beaded shoots of the grass, and a smallyellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck ofsunshine. This was all she saw; but she felt, aboveher and about her, the strong growth of the beechesclothing the ridge, the rounding of pale green cones oncountless spruce-branches, the push of myriads ofsweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slopebelow the wood, and the crowding shoots of meadowsweetand yellow flags in the pasture beyond. All thisbubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting ofcalyxes was carried to her on mingled currents offragrance. Every leaf and bud and blade seemed tocontribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness inwhich the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spiceof thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all weremerged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breathof some huge sun-warmed animal.

　　Charity had lain there a long time, passive and sun-warmed as the slope on which she lay, when there camebetween her eyes and the dancing butterfly the sight ofa man's foot in a large worn boot covered with red mud.

　　"Oh, don't!" she exclaimed, raising herself on herelbow and stretching out a warning hand.

　　"Don't what?" a hoarse voice asked above her head.

　　"Don't stamp on those bramble flowers, you dolt!" sheretorted, springing to her knees. The foot paused andthen descended clumsily on the frail branch, andraising her eyes she saw above her the bewildered faceof a slouching man with a thin sunburnt beard, andwhite arms showing through his ragged shirt.

　　"Don't you ever SEE anything, Liff Hyatt?" sheassailed him, as he stood before her with the look of aman who has stirred up a wasp's nest.

　　He grinned. "I seen you! That's what I come down for.""Down from where?" she questioned, stooping to gatherup the petals his foot had scattered.

　　He jerked his thumb toward the heights. "Been cuttingdown trees for Dan Targatt."Charity sank back on her heels and looked at himmusingly. She was not in the least afraid of poor LiffHyatt, though he "came from the Mountain," and some ofthe girls ran when they saw him. Among the morereasonable he passed for a harmless creature, a sort oflink between the mountain and civilized folk, whooccasionally came down and did a little wood cuttingfor a farmer when hands were short. Besides, she knewthe Mountain people would never hurt her: Liff himselfhad told her so once when she was a little girl, andhad met him one day at the edge of lawyer Royall'spasture. "They won't any of 'em touch you up there,f'ever you was to come up....But I don't s'pose youwill," he had added philosophically, looking at her newshoes, and at the red ribbon that Mrs. Royall had tiedin her hair.

　　Charity had, in truth, never felt any desire to visither birthplace. She did not care to have it known thatshe was of the Mountain, and was shy of being seen intalk with Liff Hyatt. But today she was not sorry tohave him appear. A great many things had happened toher since the day when young Lucius Harney had enteredthe doors of the Hatchard Memorial, but none, perhaps,so unforeseen as the fact of her suddenly finding it aconvenience to be on good terms with Liff Hyatt. Shecontinued to look up curiously at his freckled weather-beaten face, with feverish hollows below the cheekbonesand the pale yellow eyes of a harmless animal. "Iwonder if he's related to me?" she thought, with ashiver of disdain.

　　"Is there any folks living in the brown house by theswamp, up under Porcupine?" she presently asked in anindifferent tone.

　　Liff Hyatt, for a while, considered her with surprise;then he scratched his head and shifted his weight fromone tattered sole to the other.

　　"There's always the same folks in the brown house," hesaid with his vague grin.

　　"They're from up your way, ain't they?""Their name's the same as mine," he rejoineduncertainly.

　　Charity still held him with resolute eyes. "See here,I want to go there some day and take a gentleman withme that's boarding with us. He's up in these partsdrawing pictures."She did not offer to explain this statement. It wastoo far beyond Liff Hyatt's limitations for the attemptto be worth making. "He wants to see the brown house,and go all over it," she pursued.

　　Liff was still running his fingers perplexedly throughhis shock of straw-colored hair. "Is it a fellow fromthe city?" he asked.

　　"Yes. He draws pictures of things. He's down therenow drawing the Bonner house." She pointed to a chimneyjust visible over the dip of the pasture below thewood.

　　"The Bonner house?" Liff echoed incredulously.

　　"Yes. You won't understand--and it don't matter. AllI say is: he's going to the Hyatts' in a day or two."Liff looked more and more perplexed. "Bash is uglysometimes in the afternoons."She threw her head back, her eyes full on Hyatt's. "I'mcoming too: you tell him.""They won't none of them trouble you, the Hyatts won't.

　　What d'you want a take a stranger with you though?"I've told you, haven't I? You've got to tell BashHyatt."He looked away at the blue mountains on the horizon;then his gaze dropped to the chimney-top below thepasture.

　　"He's down there now?""Yes."He shifted his weight again, crossed his arms, andcontinued to survey the distant landscape. "Well, solong," he said at last, inconclusively; and turningaway he shambled up the hillside. From the ledge aboveher, he paused to call down: "I wouldn't go there aSunday"; then he clambered on till the trees closed inon him. Presently, from high overhead, Charity heardthe ring of his axe.

　　She lay on the warm ridge, thinking of many things thatthe woodsman's appearance had stirred up in her. Sheknew nothing of her early life, and had never felt anycuriosity about it: only a sullen reluctance to explorethe corner of her memory where certain blurred imageslingered. But all that had happened to her within thelast few weeks had stirred her to the sleeping depths.

　　She had become absorbingly interesting to herself, andeverything that had to do with her past was illuminatedby this sudden curiosity.

　　She hated more than ever the fact of coming from theMountain; but it was no longer indifferent to her.

　　Everything that in any way affected her was alive andvivid: even the hateful things had grown interestingbecause they were a part of herself.

　　"I wonder if Liff Hyatt knows who my mother was?" shemused; and it filled her with a tremor of surprise tothink that some woman who was once young and slight,with quick motions of the blood like hers, had carriedher in her breast, and watched her sleeping. She hadalways thought of her mother as so long dead as to beno more than a nameless pinch of earth; but now itoccurred to her that the once-young woman might bealive, and wrinkled and elf-locked like the woman shehad sometimes seen in the door of the brown house thatLucius Harney wanted to draw.

　　The thought brought him back to the central point inher mind, and she strayed away from the conjecturesroused by Liff Hyatt's presence. Speculationsconcerning the past could not hold her long when thepresent was so rich, the future so rosy, and whenLucius Harney, a stone's throw away, was bending overhis sketch-book, frowning, calculating, measuring, andthen throwing his head back with the sudden smile thathad shed its brightness over everything.

　　She scrambled to her feet, but as she did so she sawhim coming up the pasture and dropped down on the grassto wait. When he was drawing and measuring one of "hishouses," as she called them, she often strayed away byherself into the woods or up the hillside. It waspartly from shyness that she did so: from a sense ofinadequacy that came to her most painfully when hercompanion, absorbed in his job, forgot her ignoranceand her inability to follow his least allusion, andplunged into a monologue on art and life. To avoid theawkwardness of listening with a blank face, and also toescape the surprised stare of the inhabitants of thehouses before which he would abruptly pull up theirhorse and open his sketch-book, she slipped away tosome spot from which, without being seen, she couldwatch him at work, or at least look down on the househe was drawing. She had not been displeased, at first,to have it known to North Dormer and the neighborhoodthat she was driving Miss Hatchard's cousin about thecountry in the buggy he had hired of lawyer Royall.

　　She had always kept to herself, contemptuously alooffrom village love-making, without exactly knowingwhether her fierce pride was due to the sense of hertainted origin, or whether she was reserving herselffor a more brilliant fate. Sometimes she envied theother girls their sentimental preoccupations, theirlong hours of inarticulate philandering with one of thefew youths who still lingered in the village; but whenshe pictured herself curling her hair or putting a newribbon on her hat for Ben Fry or one of the Sollas boysthe fever dropped and she relapsed into indifference.

　　Now she knew the meaning of her disdains andreluctances. She had learned what she was worth whenLucius Harney, looking at her for the first time, hadlost the thread of his speech, and leaned reddening onthe edge of her desk. But another kind of shyness hadbeen born in her: a terror of exposing to vulgar perilsthe sacred treasure of her happiness. She was notsorry to have the neighbors suspect her of "going with"a young man from the city; but she did not want itknown to all the countryside how many hours of the longJune days she spent with him. What she most feared wasthat the inevitable comments should reach Mr. Royall.

　　Charity was instinctively aware that few thingsconcerning her escaped the eyes of the silent man underwhose roof she lived; and in spite of the latitudewhich North Dormer accorded to courting couples she hadalways felt that, on the day when she showed too open apreference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, makeher "pay for it." How, she did not know; and her fearwas the greater because it was undefinable. If she hadbeen accepting the attentions of one of the villageyouths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr.

　　Royall could not prevent her marrying when she choseto. But everybody knew that "going with a city fellow"was a different and less straightforward affair: almostevery village could show a victim of the perilousventure. And her dread of Mr. Royall's interventiongave a sharpened joy to the hours she spent with youngHarney, and made her, at the same time, shy of beingtoo generally seen with him.

　　As he approached she rose to her knees, stretching herarms above her head with the indolent gesture that washer way of expressing a profound well-being.

　　"I'm going to take you to that house up underPorcupine," she announced.

　　"What house? Oh, yes; that ramshackle place near theswamp, with the gipsy-looking people hanging about.

　　It's curious that a house with traces of realarchitecture should have been built in such a place.

　　But the people were a sulky-looking lot--do you supposethey'll let us in?""They'll do whatever I tell them," she said withassurance.

　　He threw himself down beside her. "Will they?" herejoined with a smile. "Well, I should like to seewhat's left inside the house. And I should like tohave a talk with the people. Who was it who wastelling me the other day that they had come down fromthe Mountain?"Charity shot a sideward look at him. It was the firsttime he had spoken of the Mountain except as a featureof the landscape. What else did he know about it, andabout her relation to it? Her heart began to beat withthe fierce impulse of resistance which sheinstinctively opposed to every imagined slight.

　　"The Mountain? I ain't afraid of the Mountain!"Her tone of defiance seemed to escape him. He laybreast-down on the grass, breaking off sprigs of thymeand pressing them against his lips. Far off, above thefolds of the nearer hills, the Mountain thrust itselfup menacingly against a yellow sunset.

　　"I must go up there some day: I want to see it," hecontinued.

　　Her heart-beats slackened and she turned again toexamine his profile. It was innocent of all unfriendlyintention.

　　"What'd you want to go up the Mountain for?""Why, it must be rather a curious place. There's aqueer colony up there, you know: sort of out-laws, alittle independent kingdom. Of course you've heardthem spoken of; but I'm told they have nothing to dowith the people in the valleys--rather look down onthem, in fact. I suppose they're rough customers; butthey must have a good deal of character."She did not quite know what he meant by having a gooddeal of character; but his tone was expressive ofadmiration, and deepened her dawning curiosity. Itstruck her now as strange that she knew so little aboutthe Mountain. She had never asked, and no one had everoffered to enlighten her. North Dormer took theMountain for granted, and implied its disparagement byan intonation rather than by explicit criticism.

　　"It's queer, you know," he continued, "that, just overthere, on top of that hill, there should be a handfulof people who don't give a damn for anybody."The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to herown revolts and defiances, and she longed to have himtell her more.

　　"I don't know much about them. Have they always beenthere?""Nobody seems to know exactly how long. Down atCreston they told me that the first colonists aresupposed to have been men who worked on the railwaythat was built forty or fifty years ago betweenSpringfield and Nettleton. Some of them took to drink,or got into trouble with the police, and went off--disappeared into the woods. A year or two later therewas a report that they were living up on the Mountain.

　　Then I suppose others joined them--and children wereborn. Now they say there are over a hundred people upthere. They seem to be quite outside the jurisdictionof the valleys. No school, no church--and no sheriffever goes up to see what they're about. But don'tpeople ever talk of them at North Dormer?""I don't know. They say they're bad."He laughed. "Do they? We'll go and see, shall we?"She flushed at the suggestion, and turned her face tohis. "You never heard, I suppose--I come from there.

　　They brought me down when I was little.""You?" He raised himself on his elbow, looking at herwith sudden interest. "You're from the Mountain? Howcurious! I suppose that's why you're so different...."Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He waspraising her--and praising her because she came fromthe Mountain!

　　"Am I...different?" she triumphed, with affectedwonder.

　　"Oh, awfully!" He picked up her hand and laid a kiss onthe sunburnt knuckles.

　　"Come," he said, "let's be off." He stood up and shookthe grass from his loose grey clothes. "What a goodday! Where are you going to take me tomorrow?"