Madigan. That
lady's placid face had not changed a particle. She sat crocheting what
she called a fascinator, her white bone needle moving harmoniously in
and out of the blue wool. Had she heard a word that had been read? Her
brother knew better than to ask. Did it make the least difference to
her whether he read from "The Martyrdom of Man" or not?

Madigan shut the book with a bang. The "martyring," boomerang that it
had proved, was over.

* * * * *

The world seems new-born every summer morning in Virginia City. This
little mining-town, dry, sterile, and unlovely, and built at an absurd
angle up the mountain, is the poor relation of her fortunate cousins of
the high Alps; yet shares with them their birthright--an open, boundless
breadth of view, an endless depth of unpolluted, sparkling air, the
fresh, shining virginity of the new-created.

It was the sense of a nature-miracle, and the desire to penetrate still
farther and higher into the crystalline sky that crowned it, which sent
the Madigans every summer toiling up Mount Davidson. They did not know
it, but yearly the _Wanderlust_ seized them, and as all things in
Virginia point one way, they followed that suggestion--upward.

They were spared the usual struggle with Frances (who, after being
coaxed, bribed, threatened, and bullied, had at last annually to be run
away from), for the reason that Frank had not slept well after the
martyring, and was still dreaming of creeping, crawling things with
blubber-lips and gloating eyes when, in the pellucid dawn, Jack Cody
found the Madigans waiting, in clean calicoes, perched on their
bottommost step.

The sun was barely over the top of Sugar Loaf, and the town, scantily
shrubberied (for water costs as many dollars in Virginia as there are
weeks in the year), lay sleeping in soft chill shadow below them,
looking oddly picturesque and strange in the unfamiliar light.

"Say," said Cody, "I think I see that Pemberton kid coming up Taylor. Is
he coming along?"

"No," said Sissy, promptly.

"Yes," said Split, firmly.

"Well, _I_ didn't ask him," from Sissy, with a haughty air of saying the
last word. The Madigans were quite accustomed to being social arbiters
in their own small world.

"Well, I did," remarked Split, easily.

A pugnacious red overshot Sissy's face. Crosby was her property, to
browbeat and maltreat as seemed best to her. She felt that Irene's
interference in a matter