Cynthia could not eat.  She hated this place, with its memories.  Hated it, too, as a mart where men were bought and sold, for the wording of those articles ran in her head as though some priest of evil were chanting them in her ears.  She did not remember then the sweeter aspect of the old town, its pretty homes set among their shaded gardens—­homes full of good and kindly people.  State House affairs were far removed from most of these, and the sickness and corruption of the body politic.  And this political corruption, had she known it, was no worse than that of the other states in the wide Union:  not so bad, indeed, as many, though this was small comfort.  No comfort at all to Cynthia, who did not think of it.

After a while she rose and followed the new conductor to the Truro train, glad to leave the capital behind her.  She was going to the hills—­to the mountains.  They, in truth, could not change, though the seasons passed over them, hot and cold, wet and dry.  They were immutable in their goodness.  Presently she saw them, the lower ones:  the waters of the little stream beside her broke the black bonds of ice and raced over the rapids; the engine was puffing and groaning on the grade.  Then the sun crept out, slowly, from the indefinable margin of vapor that hung massed over the low country.

Yes, she had come to the hills.  Up and up climbed the train, through the little white villages in the valley nooks, banked with whiter snow; through the narrow gorges,—­sometimes hanging over them,—­under steep granite walls seared with ice-filled cracks, their brows hung with icicles.

Truro Pass is not so high as the Brenner, but it has a grand, wild look in winter, remote as it is from the haunts of men.  A fitting refuge, it might be, for a great spirit heavy with the sins of the world below.  Such a place might have been chosen, in the olden time, for a monastery—­a gray fastness built against the black forest over the crag looking down upon the green clumps of spruces against the snow.  Some vague longing for such a refuge was in Cynthia’s heart as she gazed upon that silent place, and then the waters had already begun to run westward—­the waters of Tumble Down brook, which flowed into Coniston Water above Brampton.  The sun still had more than two hours to go on its journey to the hill crests when the train pulled into Brampton station.  There were but a few people on the platform, but the first face she saw as she stepped from the car was Lem Hallowell’s.  It was a very red face, as we know, and its owner was standing in front of the Coniston stage, on runners now.  He stared at her for an instant, and no wonder, and then he ran forward with outstretched hands.

“Cynthy—­Cynthy Wetherell!” he cried.  “Great Godfrey!”