And it was supper-time for everybody in that crowded coach.

If Helen had not been so absorbed by the great, wild mountain-land she would have had more interest in the passengers.

As it was she saw them, and was amused and thoughtful at the men and women and a few children in the car, all middle-class people, poor and hopeful, traveling out there to the New West to find homes.

It was splendid and beautiful, this fact, yet it inspired a brief and inexplicable sadness.

From the train window, that world of forest and crag, with its long bare reaches between, seemed so lonely, so wild, so unlivable.