She let the wind play with the puffs of her hair, and send some little light locks astray about her forehead.  She wrapped her shawl around her, and went and sat where she had sat the night before, at the eastern end of the balcony, her face toward the morning hills, as it had been toward the evening radiance and purple shade.  Marmaduke Wharne was moving up and down, stopping a little short of her when he turned, keeping his own solitude as she kept hers.  Faces and figures glanced out at the hall-door for an instant each, and the keen salute of the north wind sent them invariably in again.  Nobody wanted to go with a red nose or tossed hair to the breakfast-table; and breakfast was almost ready.  But presently Mrs. Linceford came, and, seeing Mr. Wharne, who always interested and amused her, she ventured forth, bidding him good-morning.

“Good-morning, madam.  It is a good morning.”

“A little sharp, isn’t it?” she said, shrugging her shoulders together, irresolute about further lingering.  “Ah, Leslie?  Let me introduce you to the Reverend Mr. Wharne.  My young friend and traveling companion, Miss Leslie Goldthwaite, Mr. Wharne.  Have you two driven everybody else off, or is it the nipping air?”

“I think it is either that they have not said their prayers this morning, or that they don’t know their daily bread when they see it.  They think it is only saleratus cakes and maple molasses.”

“As cross this morning as last night?” the lady questioned playfully.

“Not cross at all, Mrs. Linceford.  Only jarred upon continually by these people we have here just now.  It was different two years ago.  But Jefferson is getting to be too well known.  The mountain places are being spoiled, one after another.”

“People will come.  You can’t help that.”

“Yes, they will come, and frivel about the gates, without ever once entering in.  ’Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?  And who shall stand in his holy place?  He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity.’”

Leslie Goldthwaite’s face quickened and glowed; they were the psalm lines that had haunted her thought yesterday, among the opening visions of the hill-country.  Marmaduke Wharne bent his keen eyes upon her, from under their gray brows, noting her narrowly.  She wist not that she was noted, or that her face shone.

“One soul here, at least!” was what the stern old man said to himself in that moment.

He was cynical and intolerant here among the mountains, where he felt the holy places desecrated, and the gift of God unheeded.  In the haunts of city misery and vice,—­misery and vice shut in upon itself, with no broad outlook to the heavens,—­he was tender, with the love of Christ himself.

“’My house shall be called the house of prayer, but these have made it a den of thieves.’  It is true not alone of the temples built with hands.”