Hite capably, as if he had always
advocated this method of solving the difficulty. His interlocutor
could not for a moment have dreamed that he had never before seen a
camera, had never heard of a photograph, had not the least idea of
what the process of sketching might be which he so boldly approved;
nay, the very phrase embodying his encouragement of the project was
foreign to his vocabulary,--a bit of sophisticated slang which he had
adopted from his companion's conversation, and readily assimilated.

"You stay just where you are!" cried the stranger, his enthusiasm
rising to the occasion; "just that pose,--that pose precisely."

He ran swiftly across the path to remove the inefficient camera from
the foreground, and in a moment was seated on a log by the wayside,
his quick eye scanning the scene: the close file of the ranges about
the horizon, one showing above another, and one more faintly blue
than another, for thus the distance was defined; then the amphitheatre
of the Cove, the heavy bronze-green slopes of the mountains, all with
ripple marks of clear chrome-green ruffling in the wake of the wind;
in the middle distance the still depths of the valley below, with
shadows all a-slumber and silent, and on the projecting spur the
quiet, lonely little house, so slight a suggestion of the presence of
man amidst the majestic dominance of nature; here, to the right,
across the savage gorge, with its cliffs and with its currents in the
deep trough, the nearest slope of the mountain, with the great gaunt
bare space showing that face of ill omen, sibylline, sinister,
definite indeed,--he wondered how his eyes were holden that he should
not have discerned it at once; and in the immediate foreground the
equestrian figure of the mountaineer, booted and spurred, the very
"moral," as Hite would have called it, of an athlete, with his fine
erect pose distinct against the hazy perspective, his expression of
confident force, the details of his handsome features revealed by the
brim of his wide black hat turned up in front.

"It's a big subject, I know; I can't get it all in. I shall only
suggest it. Just keep that pose, will you? Hold the horse still.
'Stand the storm, it won't be long!'" the artist said, smiling with
renewed satisfaction as his pencil, not all inapt, went briskly to
work on the horizontal lines of the background.

But it was longer than he had thought, so still sat the contemplative
mountaineer, so alluring w