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