Below her, now beginning to glow in the evening light, opened out one of
the finest valleys of the southern Appalachees. Lapped in it, far off,
shrouded with rosy mist which she did not identify as transmuted coal
smoke, a city lay, fretted with spires, already sparkling with electric
lights, set like a glittering boss of jewels in the broad curve of a
shining river.
Directly down the steep at their feet was the cotton-mill town, a suburb
clustered about a half-dozen great factories, whose long rows of lighted
windows defined their black bulk. There was a stream here, too; a small,
sluggish thing that flowed from tank to tank among the factories,
spanned by numerous handrails, bridged in one place for the wagon-road
to cross. Mills, valley, town, distant rimming mountains, river and
creek, glowed and pulsed, dissolved and relimned themselves in the
uprolling glory of sunset.
"Oh, wait for me a minute, Shade," pleaded the girl, pulling off her
sunbonnet.... "I want to look.... Never in my life did I see anything
so sightly!"
"Good land!" laughed the man, with a note of impatience in his voice.
"You and me was raised on mountain scenery, as a body may say. I should
think we'd both had enough of it to last us."
"But this--this is different," groped Johnnie, trying to explain the
emotions that possessed her.
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