The transition from the careless life of a student was swift and
bitter; it was like beginning a new life with a new identity, though
Clayton suffered less than he anticipated. He had become
interested from the first. There was nothing in the pretty glen,
when he came, but a mountaineer's cabin and a few gnarled old
apple-trees, the roots of which checked the musical flow of a little
stream. Then the air was filled with the tense ring of hammer and
saw, the mellow echoes of axes, and the shouts of ox-drivers from
the forests, indignant groans from the mountains, and a little town
sprang up before his eyes, and cars of shining coal wound slowly
about the mountainside.

Activity like this stirred his blood. Busy from dawn to dark, he
had no time to grow miserable. His work was hard, to be sure, but
it made rest and sleep a luxury, and it had the new zest of
independence; he even began to take in it no little pride when he
found himself an essential part of the quick growth going on.
When leisure came, he could take to woods filled with unknown
birds, new forms of insect life, and strange plants and flowers.
With every day, too, he was more deeply stirred by the changing
beauty of the mountains hidden at dawn with white mists, faintly
veiled through the day with an atmosphere that made him think of
Italy, and enriched by sunsets of startling beauty. But strongest of
all was the interest he found in the odd human mixture about
him-the simple, good-natured darkies who slouched past him,
magnificent in physique and picturesque with rags; occasional
foreigners just from Castle Garden, with the hope of the New
World still in their faces; and now and then a gaunt mountaineer
stalking awkwardly in the rear of the march toward civilization.
Gradually it had dawned upon him that this last, silent figure,