“It's queer, you know,” he continued, “that, just over there, on top of that hill, there should be a handful of people who don't give a damn for anybody.”
The words thrilled her. They seemed the clue to her own revolts and defiances, and she longed to have him tell her more.
“I don't know much about them. Have they always been there?”
“Nobody seems to know exactly how long. Down at Creston they told me that the first colonists are supposed to have been men who worked on the railway that was built forty or fifty years ago between Springfield 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 there was a report that they were living up on the Mountain. Then I suppose others joined them--and children were born. Now they say there are over a hundred people up there. They seem to be quite outside the jurisdiction of the valleys. No school, no church--and no sheriff ever goes up to see what they're about. But don't people ever talk of them at North Dormer?”
He laughed. “Do they? We'll go and see, shall we?”
She flushed at the suggestion, and turned her face to his. “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 her with sudden interest. “You're from the Mountain? How curious! I suppose that's why you're so different....”
Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He was praising her--and praising her because she came from the Mountain!
“Am I... different?” she triumphed, with affected wonder.
“Oh, awfully!” He picked up her hand and laid a kiss on the sunburnt knuckles.
“Come,” he said, “let's be off.” He stood up and shook the grass from his loose grey clothes. “What a good day! Where are you going to take me tomorrow?”
That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listened to Mr. Royall and young Harney talking in the porch.
She had remained indoors after the table had been cleared and old Verena had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green, and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's voices rose and fell.