re and there, and finally
capped with white where they pierced the blue. Up to their base ran the
lumbering foot-hills, and still further up the grey sides, like
attacking columns, the dark daring pines swarmed in massed battalions;
then, where ravines gave them footing, in regiments, then in outpost
pickets, and last of all in lonely rigid sentinels. But far above the
loneliest sentinel pine, cold, white, serene, shone the peaks. The
Highland blood in Shock's veins stirred to the call of the hills.
Glancing around to make sure he was quite alone--he had almost never
been where he could be quite sure that he would not be heard--Shock
raised his voice in a shout, again, and, expanding his lungs to the
full, once again. How small his voice seemed, how puny his strength,
how brief his life, in the presence of those silent, mighty, ancient
ranges with their hoary faces and snowy heads. Awed by their solemn
silence, and by the thought of their ancient, eternal, unchanging
endurance, he repeated to himself in a low tone the words of the
ancient Psalm:

"Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place,
In generations all,
Before Thou ever hadst brought forth
The mountains, great or small!"

How exalting are the mountains and how humbling! How lonely and how
comforting! How awesome and how kindly! How relentless and how
sympathetic! Reflecting every mood of man, they add somewhat to his
nobler stature and diminish somewhat his ignobler self. To all true
appeal they give back answer, but to the heart regarding iniquity, like
God, they make no response. They never obtrude themselves, but they
smile upon his joys, and in his sorrow offer silent sympathy, and ever
as God's messengers they bid him remember that with all their mass man
is mightier than they, that when the slow march of the pines shall have
trod down their might's dust, still with the dew of eternal youth fresh
upon his brow will he be with God.

Then and there in Shock's heart there sprang up a kindly feeling for
the mountains that through all his varying experiences never left him.
They were always there, steadfastly watchful by day like the eye of
God, and at night while he slept keeping unslumbering guard like
Jehovah himself. All day as he drove up the interminable slopes and
down again, the mountains kept company with him, as friends might. So
much so that he caught himself, more than once after moments of
absorption, glancing up at them with hasty penite