vil come
along, an' I'll drive 'em back to the hell they belong to."

CHAPTER XXVI

IRONY

The hills roll away, banking on every side, mounting up, pile on pile,
like the mighty waves of a storm-swept ocean. The darkening splendor,
the magnificent ruggedness crowds down upon the narrow open places
with a strange sense of oppression, almost of desolation. It seems as
if nothing on earth could ever be so great as that magnificent world,
nothing could ever be so small as the life which peoples it.

The oppression, the desolation grows. The silent shadows of the
endless woods crowd with a suggestion of horrors untold, of mysteries
too profound to be even guessed at. A strange feeling as of a reign of
enchantment pervading sets the flesh of the superstitious creeping.
And the narrow, patchy sunlight, by its brilliant contrast, only
serves to aggravate the sensitive nerves.

Yet in the woods lurk few enough dangers. It is only their dark
stillness. They are still, still in the calm of the brightest day, or
in the chill of a windless night. A timid bear, a wolf who spends its
desolate life in dismal protest against a solitary fate, the crashing
rush of a startled caribou, the deliberate bellow of a bull moose,
strayed far south from its northern fastnesses. These are the harmless
creatures peopling the obscure recesses. For the rest, they are the
weird suggestions of a sensitive imagination.

The awe, however, is undeniable and the mind of man can never wholly
escape it. Familiarity may temper, but inborn human superstition is
indestructible. The brooding silence will shadow the lightest nature.
The storms must ever inspire wonder. The gloom hushes the voice. And
so the growing dread. Man may curse the hills in his brutal moments,
the thoughtful may be driven to despair, the laughter-loving may seek
solace in tears of depression. But the fascination clings. There is no
escape. The cloy of the seductive drug holds to that world of mystery,
and they come to it again, and yet again.

Something of all this was vaguely drifting through the mind of one of
the occupants of a four-horsed, two-wheeled spring cart as it rose
upon the monstrous shoulder of one of the greater hills. Before it lay
a view of a dark and wild descent, sloping away unto the very bowels
of a pit of gloom. The trail was vague and bush-grown, and crowding
trees dangerously narrowed it. To the right the hill fell sharply away
at the edge of the tr