igher still, the invisible mountain tops.

"It is only a few hundred yards further," Rochester said, holding his
companion by the arm. "What a country, though! I wonder if it ever
stops snowing."

"It is wonderful!" she murmured. "Wonderful!"

And then, as though in some strange relation to his words, the storm
of whirling snow-flakes suddenly ceased. The thin veil passed away
from overhead like gossamer. They saw a clear sky. They saw, even, the
gleam of reflected sunshine, and as the mist lifted, the country above
and beyond unrolled itself in one grand and splendid transformation
scene: woods above woods; snow-clad peaks, all glittering with their
burden of icicles and snow; and above, a white chaos, where the
mountain-peak struck the clouds.

They paused for a moment, breathless.

"It is like Naudheim himself," she declared. "This is the land he
spoke of. This is the place to which he climbed. It is wonderful!"

"Come," Rochester said. "We must be up before the darkness."

Slowly they made their way along the mountain road, which their guide
in front was doing all he could to make smooth for them. And then at
the corner they found a log hut, to which their guide pointed
triumphantly.

"It is there!" he exclaimed--"there where they live, the two madmen.
Beyond, you see, is the village of the woodhewers."

Rochester nodded. They struggled a few steps upwards, and then paused
to look with wonder at the scene below. The one log cabin before which
they were now standing, had been built alone. Barely a hundred yards
away, across the ravine, were twenty or thirty similar ones, from the
roofs of which the smoke went curling upwards. It seemed for a moment
as though they had climbed above the world of noises--climbed into the
land of eternal silence. Before they had had time, however, to frame
the thought, they heard the crashing of timber across the ravine, and
a great tree fell inwards. A sound like distant thunder rose and
swelled at every moment.

"It is the machinery," their guide told them. "The trees fall and are
stripped of their boughs. Then they go down the ravine there, and
along the slide all the way to the river. See them all the way, like a
great worm. Day and night, month by month--there is never a minute
when a tree does not fall."

Again they heard the crashing, and another tree fell. They heard the
rumble of the slide in the forest. The peculiar scent of fresh sap
seemed like a perfume in the