by the name
of "shootin'-iron." The musician carried no weapon. "I ain't 'feared o'
no wolf," he said; "I'll play 'em a chune." He went on in the vanguard,
his tousled yellow hair idealized with many a shimmer in the moonlight
as it hung curling down on his blue jeans coat, his cheek laid softly on
the violin, the bow glancing back and forth as if strung with moonbeams
as he played. The men woke the solemn silences with their loud mirthful
voices; they startled precipitate echoes; they fell into disputes and
wrangled loudly, and would have turned back if sure of the way home, but
Job Grinnell led steadily on, and they were fain to follow. They lagged
to look at a spot where some man, unheeded even by tradition, had dug
his heart's grave in a vain search for precious metal. A deep excavation
in the midst of the wilderness told the story; how long ago it was might
be guessed from the age of a stalwart oak that had sunk roots into its
depths; the shadows were heavy about it; a sense of despair brooded in
the loneliness. And so up and up the endless ascent; sometimes great
chasms were at one side, stretching further and further, and crowding
the narrow path--the herder's trail--against the sheer ascent, till it
seemed that the treacherous mountains were yawning to engulf them. The
air was growing colder, but was exquisitely clear and exhilarating;
the great dewy ferns flung silvery fronds athwart the way; vines in
stupendous lengths swung from the tops of gigantic trees to the roots.
Hark! among them birds chirp; a matutinal impulse seems astir in
the woods; the moon is undimmed; the stars faint only because of her
splendors; but one can feel that the earth has roused itself to a sense
of a new day. And there, with such feathery flashes of white foam, such
brilliant straight lengths of translucent water, such a leaping grace of
impetuous motion, the currents of the mountain stream, like the arrows
of Diana, shoot down the slopes. And now a vague mist is among the
trees, and when it clears away they seem shrunken, as under a spell, to
half their size. They grow smaller and smaller still, oak and chestnut
and beech, but dwarfed and gnarled like some old orchard. And suddenly
they cease, and the vast grassy dome uprises against the sky, in which
the moon is paling into a dull similitude of itself; no longer wondrous,
transcendent, but like some lily of opaque whiteness, fair and fading.
Beneath is a purple, deeply serious, and s