above where
she stood the towering woods seemed to be waiting with opened ranks
to absorb her with the little cabin she had quitted, dwarfed into
insignificance in the vast prospect; but nowhere was there another sign
or indication of human life and habitation. She looked in vain for
the settlement, for the rugged ditches, the scattered cabins, and the
unsightly heaps of gravel. In the glamour of the moonlight they had
vanished; a veil of silver-gray vapor touched here and there with ebony
shadows masked its site. A black strip beyond was the river bank. All
else was changed. With a sudden sense of awe and loneliness she turned
to the cabin and its sleeping inmates--all that seemed left to her in
the vast and stupendous domination of rock and wood and sky.

But in another moment the loneliness passed. A new and delicious sense
of an infinite hospitality and friendliness in their silent presence
began to possess her. This same slighted, forgotten, uncomprehended,
but still foolish and forgiving Nature seemed to be bending over her
frightened and listening ear with vague but thrilling murmurings of
freedom and independence. She felt her heart expand with its wholesome
breath, her soul fill with its sustaining truth.

She felt--

What was that?

An unmistakable outburst of a drunken song at the foot of the slope:--

"Oh, my name it is Johnny from Pike,
I'm h-ll on a spree or a strike." . . .

She stopped as crimson with shame and indignation as if the viewless
singer had risen before her.

"I knew when to bet, and get up and get--"

"Hush! D--n it all. Don't you hear?"

There was the sound of hurried whispers, a "No" and "Yes," and then a
dead silence.

Christie crept nearer to the edge of the slope in the shadow of a
buckeye. In the clearer view she could distinguish a staggering
figure in the trail below who had evidently been stopped by two other
expostulating shadows that were approaching from the shelter of a tree.

"Sho!--didn't know!"

The staggering figure endeavored to straighten itself, and then slouched
away in the direction of the settlement. The two mysterious shadows
retreated again to the tree, and were lost in its deeper shadow.
Christie darted back to the cabin, and softly reentered her room.

"I thought I heard a noise that woke me, and I missed you," said Jessie,
rubbing her eyes. "Did you see anything?"

"No," said Christie, beginning to undress.

"You weren't frighte