, one of the very youngest. The brilliant
February day gleamed like a jewel upon the proud and grateful earth. The
sky was one glorious arch of tingling blue, beneath which the snowy
peaks shone with a joyful glitter. The air had the keen, dry sparkle
that is sometimes compared to champagne, greatly to the advantage of
that pleasant beverage. In short, it was a real Colorado day, and these
young people were off on a real Colorado picnic. How exceptionally
characteristic the occasion might prove to be, no one suspected, simply
because no one payed sufficient heed to a shred of gray vapor that
hovered on the brow of the Peak. Amy Lovejoy, to be sure, remarked that
there would be wind before night, and another old resident driving by,
waved his hat toward the Peak, and cried, "Look out for hurricanes!" But
no one was the wiser for that.

The last packages of good things, the last overcoat and extra wrap, were
stowed away under the seats of the yellow buckboards; the mercurial
youth, Jack Hersey by name, had cried, for the last time, "Are we
ready,--say, _are_ we ready?" Elliot Chittenden's restive bronco, known
as "my nag," had cut its last impatient caper; and off they started, a
gay holiday throng, passing down the Avenue to the tune of jingling
harness and chattering voices and ringing hoofs. From a south porch on
the one hand, and a swinging gate on the other, friends called a cheery
greeting; elderly people jogging past in slow buggies, met the
pleasure-seekers with a benignant smile; foot-passengers turned and
waved their wide sombreros, and over yonder the Peak beamed upon them,
with never a hint of warning; for the gray vapor hovering there was far
too slight a film to cast a shadow upon that broad and radiant front.

"It makes one think of the new Jerusalem, and the walls of Walhalla, and
every sort of brilliant vision," Stephen Burns remarked, as his horse
and Amy's cantered side by side, a little apart from the others.

"Yes," said Amy, looking absently before her; "I suppose it does." And
she wondered, as she had done more than once in the past two weeks, why
she could not enter more responsively into the spirit of his
conversation. She knew, and she would once have considered it a fact of
the first importance, that to Stephen Burns the New Jerusalem was not
more sacred than the abode of the ancient gods,--or, to be more
accurate, Walhalla was not less beautiful and real than the sacred city
of the Hebrews. E