the huge boulders the animals were
compelled to uprear and struggle blindly through the tangled mass of
vegetation. Once the saddle-horse fell heavily and the man removed the
pack to get the animal on its feet. After it started on its way again
the man thrust his head out from among the leaves and peered up at the
hillside.

"The measly skunk!" he said, and disappeared.

There was a ripping and tearing of vines and boughs. The trees surged
back and forth, marking the passage of the animals through the midst
of them. There was a clashing of steel-shod hoofs on stone, and now and
again an oath or a sharp cry of command. Then the voice of the man was
raised in song:--

"Tu'n around an' tu'n yo' face
Untoe them sweet hills of grace
(D' pow'rs of sin yo' am scornin'!).
Look about an, look aroun',
Fling yo' sin-pack on d' groun'
(Yo' will meet wid d' Lord in d' mornin'!)."

The song grew faint and fainter, and through the silence crept back the
spirit of the place. The stream once more drowsed and whispered; the hum
of the mountain bees rose sleepily. Down through the perfume-weighted
air fluttered the snowy fluffs of the cottonwoods. The butterflies
drifted in and out among the trees, and over all blazed the quiet
sunshine. Only remained the hoof-marks in the meadow and the torn
hillside to mark the boisterous trail of the life that had broken the
peace of the place and passed on.

PLANCHETTE

"It is my right to know," the girl said.

Her voice was firm-fibred with determination. There was no hint of
pleading in it, yet it was the determination that is reached through a
long period of pleading. But in her case it had been pleading, not of
speech, but of personality. Her lips had been ever mute, but her face
and eyes, and the very attitude of her soul, had been for a long time
eloquent with questioning. This the man had known, but he had never
answered; and now she was demanding by the spoken word that he answer.

"It is my right," the girl repeated.

"I know it," he answered, desperately and helplessly.

She waited, in the silence which followed, her eyes fixed upon the light
that filtered down through the lofty boughs and bathed the great redwood
trunks in mellow warmth. This light, subdued and colored, seemed almost
a radiation from the trunks themselves, so strongly did they saturate
it with their hue. The girl saw without seeing, as she heard, without
hearing, the deep