CHAPTER VIII.
JOAN Thus, warm and fragrant, the summer came with Kenny in the house of Adam Craig, drifting pleasantly he knew and cared not where; with Brian on the road with Donald West.
And Joan?
To her summer came with a new incomprehensible delight.

Out of the void a bright spirit had roved into her world, sweeping her, eager and unresistant, into youth and life and laughter.

He came from an immensity of romantic experience, holding out his hands to her, with tender eyes and a look of youth and charm and understanding in his vivid face.
She had fought through drab and solitude to dreams and formless craving, this girl of the hills.

What things of vigor her life had known were cruel: a passionate shrinking from her uncle, a fear for the brother who had hotly rebelled at the meager life around him, a loneliness aloof from her kind and a vague hunger for some fuller, sweeter life beyond the hills.

And with a blast of a horn the drab had vanished.
There were times when the girl's soft eyes opened wide in a panic of incredulity.