He was not the only one about the temporary railroad station who eyed
the group with curiosity and interest. Two of the travellers were ladies
from the bluegrass and scarcely one of all the natives lingering about
the workings had ever seen a lady from the bluegrass, while, to the
young surveyors and the group of civil engineers who had, for months,
been exiled by their work among the mountains from all association with
such lovely creatures, it was a joy to stand apart and covertly gaze at
them. Many a young fellow, months away from home, who had grasped the
newspapers and letters which had come in with the other mail with eager
fingers, anxious to devour their contents, had, after the two ladies had
descended from the train, almost forgotten his anxiety to get the news
from home, and stood there, now, with opened letters in his hands,
unread.

The ladies were very worthy of attention, too. Miss Alathea Layson, the
elder of the two, was slight, beautifully groomed despite the long and
dirty trip on rough cars over the crude road-bed of a newly graded
railway. A woman whose thirtieth birthday had been left behind some
years before, she still had all the brightness and vivacity of the
twenties in her carriage and her manner. Her voice, as it drifted to the
young moonshiner, was a new experience to him--soft, well modulated,
cultivated, it was of a sort which he had never heard before, and, while
it seemed to him affected, nevertheless thrilled him with an
unacknowledged admiration.

It was she who showed the greatest disappointment about the general
ignorance concerning Layson's whereabouts, and that voice made
instantaneous and irresistible appeal to the older men among the party
of engineers and surveyors, who, finding an excuse in her discomfiture,