howed more
plainly than before. He did not boast openly, but he introduced
extraneous details important in themselves. He mentioned knowing
Pennington the painter, and Brookes the writer, merely in a casual
fashion, but with just the faintest flourish. It somehow became known
that his family had a crest, that his position was high; in short, that
he was a de Laney on both sides. He liked to tell it to this girl,
because it was evidently fresh and new to her, and because in the
presence of her inexperience in these matters he gained a confidence in
himself which he had never dared assume before.

She looked straight in front of her and listened, throwing in a
comment now and then to assist the stream of his talk. At last, when he
fell silent, she reached swiftly out and patted his cheek with her
hand.

"You are a dear big _boy_," she said quietly. "But I like it--oh, so
much!"

From the tree tops below the clear warble of the purple finch
proclaimed that under the fronds twilight had fallen. The vast green
surface of the hills was streaked here and there with irregular peaks
of darkness dwindling eastward. The sun was nearly down.

A sudden gloom blotted out the fretwork of the pine shadows that had,
during the latter part of the afternoon, lain athwart the rock. They
looked up startled.

The shadow of Harney had crept out to them, and, even as they looked,
it stole on, cat-like, across the lower ridges toward the East. One
after another the rounded hills changed hue as it crossed them. For a
moment it lingered in the tangle of woods at the outermost edge, and
then without further pause glided out over the prairie. They watched it
fascinated. The sparkle was quenched in the Cheyenne; the white gleam
of the Bad Lands became a dull gray, scarce distinguishable from the
gray of the twilight. Though a single mysterious cleft a long yellow
bar pointed down across the plains, paused at the horizon, and slowly
lifted into the air. The mountain shadow followed it steadily up into
the sky, growing and growing against the dullness of the east, until at
last over against them in the heavens was the huge phantom of a
mountain, infinitely greater, infinitely grander than any mountain ever
seen by mortal eyes, and lifting higher and higher, commanded upward by
that single wand of golden light. Then suddenly the wand was withdrawn
and the ghost mountain merged into the yellow afterglow of evening.

The girl had watched it breat