kness before her
eyes, she had become an unsparing and distrustful critic, with the sole
effect of awakening his distrust and withdrawing his confidence from
her.

He was beginning to deceive her as he had never deceived her mother.
Even Jessie knew more of this last enterprise than she did herself.

All that did not tend to decrease her utter restlessness. It was already
past midnight when she noticed that the wind had again abated. The
mountain breeze had by this time possessed the stifling valleys and
heated bars of the river in its strong, cold embraces; the equilibrium
of Nature was restored, and a shadowy mist rose from the hollow. A
stillness, more oppressive and intolerable than the previous commotion,
began to pervade the house and the surrounding woods. She could hear the
regular breathing of the sleepers; she even fancied she could detect the
faint impulses of the more distant life in the settlement. The far-off
barking of a dog, a lost shout, the indistinct murmur of some nearer
watercourse--mere phantoms of sound--made the silence more irritating.
With a sudden resolution she arose, dressed herself quietly and
completely, threw a heavy cloak over her head and shoulders, and opened
the door between the living-room and her own. Her father was sleeping
soundly in his bunk in the corner. She passed noiselessly through the
room, opened the lightly fastened door, and stepped out into the night.

In the irritation and disgust of her walk hither, she had never noticed
the situation of the cabin, as it nestled on the slope at the fringe of
the woods; in the preoccupation of her disappointment and the mechanical
putting away of her things, she had never looked once from the window of
her room, or glanced backward out of the door that she had entered. The
view before her was a revelation--a reproach, a surprise that took away
her breath. Over her shoulders the newly risen moon poured a flood of
silvery light, stretching from her feet across the shining bars of the
river to the opposite bank, and on up to the very crest of the
Devil's Spur--no longer a huge bulk of crushing shadow, but the steady
exaltation of plateau, spur, and terrace clothed with replete and
unutterable beauty. In this magical light that beauty seemed to be
sustained and carried along by the river winding at its base, lifted
again to the broad shoulder of the mountain, and lost only in the
distant vista of death-like, overcrowning snow. Behind and