little mouth
tightening fiercely. It was a big world, though, that was spread before
her and a vague awe of it seized her straightway and held her motionless
and dreaming. Beyond those white mists trailing up the hills, beyond the
blue smoke drifting in the valley, those limitless blue waves must run
under the sun on and on to the end of the world! Her dead sister had
gone into that far silence and had brought back wonderful stories of
that outer world: and she began to wonder more than ever before whether
she would ever go into it and see for herself what was there. With the
thought, she rose slowly to her feet, moved slowly to the cliff that
dropped sheer ten feet aside from the trail, and stood there like a
great scarlet flower in still air. There was the way at her feet--that
path that coiled under the cliff and ran down loop by loop through
majestic oak and poplar and masses of rhododendron. She drew a long
breath and stirred uneasily--she'd better go home now--but the path had
a snake-like charm for her and still she stood, following it as far down
as she could with her eyes. Down it went, writhing this way and that
to a spur that had been swept bare by forest fires. Along this spur it
travelled straight for a while and, as her eyes eagerly followed it
to where it sank sharply into a covert of maples, the little creature
dropped of a sudden to the ground and, like something wild, lay flat.

A human figure had filled the leafy mouth that swallowed up the trail
and it was coming towards her. With a thumping heart she pushed slowly
forward through the brush until her face, fox-like with cunning and
screened by a blueberry bush, hung just over the edge of the cliff, and
there she lay, like a crouched panther-cub, looking down. For a moment,
all that was human seemed gone from her eyes, but, as she watched, all
that was lost came back to them, and something more. She had seen that
it was a man, but she had dropped so quickly that she did not see the
big, black horse that, unled, was following him. Now both man and horse
had stopped. The stranger had taken off his gray slouched hat and he was
wiping his face with something white. Something blue was tied loosely
about his throat. She had never seen a man like that before. His face
was smooth and looked different, as did his throat and his hands. His
breeches were tight and on his feet were strange boots that were the
colour of his saddle, which was deep in seat, high both