lively
interest, and promised the trip should be so easy that when she
consented to go he made it his affair to attend directly to her comfort
and safety.

He summoned one particular liveryman, not a favorite at the fashionable
hotel, and to him gave especial injunctions about the horses. The
girths Glover himself went over at starting, and in the riding he kept
near Marie.

Lighted by the stars, they left the hotel in the early evening. "How
are you to find your way, Mr. Glover?" asked Marie, as they threaded
the path He led her into after they had reached the mountain. "Is this
the road we came on?"

"I could climb Pilot blindfolded, I reckon. When we came in here I ran
surveys all around the old fellow, switchbacks and everything. The
line is a Chinese puzzle about here for ten miles. The path you're on
now is an old Indian trail out of Devil's Gap. The guides don't use it
because it is too long. The Gap is a ten-dollar trip, in any case, and
naturally they make it the shortest way."

For thirty minutes they rode in darkness, then leaving a sharp defile
they emerged on a plateau.

Across the Sinks the moon was rising full and into a clear sky. To the
right twinkled the lights of Glen Tarn, and below them yawned the
unspeakable wrench in the granite shoulders of the Pilot range called
Devil's Gap. Out of its appalling darkness projected miles of silvered
spurs tipped like grinning teeth by the light of the moon.

"There are a good many Devil's Gaps in the Rockies," said Glover, after
the silence had been broken; "but, I imagine, if the devil condescends
to acknowledge any he wouldn't disclaim this."

Gertrude stood beside her sister. "You are quite right," she admitted.
"We have spent our month here and missed the only overpowering
spectacle. This is Dante."

"Indeed it is," he assented, eagerly. "I must tell you. The first
time I got into the Gap with a locating party I had a volume of Dante
in my pack. It is an unfortunate trait of mine that in reading I am
compelled to chart the topography of a story as I go along. In the
'Inferno' I could never get head or tail of the topography. One night
we camped on this very ledge. In the night the horses roused me. When
I opened the tent fly the moon was up, about where it is now. I stood
till I nearly froze, looking--but I thought after that I could chart
the 'Inferno.' If it weren't so dry, or if we were going to stay all
night, I should have