FOR LOVE OF THE HILLS


"Sure you're done with it?"

"Oh, yes," replied the girl, the suggestion of a smile on her face,
and in her voice the suggestion of a tear. "Yes; I was just going."

But she did not go. She turned instead to the end of the alcove and
sat down before a table placed by the window. Leaning her elbows
upon it she looked about her through a blur of tears.

Seen through her own eyes of longing, it seemed that almost all of
the people whom she could see standing before the files of the daily
papers were homesick. The reading-room had been a strange study to
her during those weeks spent in fruitless search for the work she
wanted to do, and it had likewise proved a strange comfort. When
tired and disconsolate and utterly sick at heart there was always
one thing she could do--she could go down to the library and look at
the paper from home. It was not that she wanted the actual news of
Denver. She did not care in any vital way what the city officials
were doing, what buildings were going up, or who was leaving town.
She was only indifferently interested in the fires and the murders.
She wanted the comforting companionship of that paper from home.

It seemed there were many to whom the papers offered that same
sympathy, companionship, whatever it might be. More than anything
else it perhaps gave to them--the searchers, drifters--a sense of
anchorage. She would not soon forget the day she herself had stumbled