Anne Wolff was the sixteen-year-old daughter of one of the other miners in the Fallon Brothers Mine. She was still going to school in the little Menchon schoolhouse—a slender, dark-haired, shy little girl, with a curious, wild sort of beauty and unnaturally big black eyes.
Anne was “Jimmy’s girl”—accepted as such by their fellows. It was the only love that Anne had ever known, and to her it meant everything, even though she had never given it voice.
Jimmy had long since told Anne of his dreams, and in the girl’s love he had found a ready response, even though at times she could hardly understand these vague longings that he found so difficult to put into words. She believed in him and she encouraged him; and so he made her his confidant, telling her things he never told his sister or even his mother.
Anne was waiting for Jimmy this afternoon at the gate of her little frame house, dressed in her newest print frock, her long black hair in braids over her shoulders, and a gray woolen scarf wound about her throat. Her cheeks were red with the color of youth and health, and her eyes sparkled with pleasure at sight of him. Jimmy kissed her in greeting, thinking as he did so that she was the most beautiful and wonderful little girl in all the world.
“Where we going?” asked Anne when he had released her.
“I don’t know. Where?”
“It’s a beautiful day,” said the girl, looking up into the blue of the sky. Then she put her hand in his. “Let’s go—anywhere.”
Walking hand in hand, they slipped past the little village—Jimmy instinctively turned away from the mines—down the road, and out into the open country. Distant blue hills lay ahead; on both sides of the road lay rolling country, and sometimes they passed fields of wild flowers.
“It ain’t that I mind the work,” said Jimmy suddenly, when they had been walking for some time. “The work’s all right. But up here—like today, Anne—under the sky—it’s different up here. Seems like a fellow had a chance to do something big up here. But down there, Anne—in the dark and damp—all shut in—”
He stopped as the girl tightened the pressure of her fingers upon his. He had often spoken this way to her before—used the very same words, perhaps—and he knew that she understood, and felt that way about it, too. But today it seemed different, more important, more pressing a problem—as though today, somehow, he must find some way out, some goal ahead toward which he could strive.