the feet of glooming precipices;
under crests where the snow clung on she played at indifference,
loitering with a new flower, knowing that little by little the thaw
would answer her veiled efforts, that in the end the monarch of all the
brooding mountain tops would discard the white mantle of aloofness and
thrill to her embrace; knowing, too, that with each successive conquest
made secure she would only laugh in that singing voice of hers and turn
her back and pass on. On and on, over ridges and ranges, and so around
the world.

The woods lay steeped in sunshine, enwrapped in characteristic quietude.
There was no wind to ruffle the man's hair, no sound of a falling cone
or of dead leaves crackling under a squirrel's foot. And yet the man had
the air now of one listening, hearkening to the silence itself. For
silence among the pines is not the dead void of desert lands, but a
great hush like the finger-to-lip command in a sleeper's room, or the
still message of a sea-shell held to the ear. The countless millions of
cedar and pine needles seemed as motionless as the very mountains
themselves, yet it was they who laid the gently audible command upon the
balmy afternoon and whispered the great hush. That whisper the man
heard, it seemed to him, less with his ears than with his soul.

He went back to the tree against which he had rested and picked up his
hat and a small canvas roll. And yet again, with his hat in his hand, he
stood motionless, his eyes lingering along the cliff tops across the
little lake, his attitude that of a man listening to an invitation which
he would like to accept but in the end meant to refuse. Already he had
marked out the way he planned to go, and still the nearer peaks with the
sunshine upon them called to him. One would have hazarded that they were
familiar from oft-repeated visits, and that among his plans to the
contrary a desire to climb them insisted. He glanced at the sun again,
shook his head, and took the first step slantingly downward along the
slope. But only once more to grow as still as the big trees about him.
Slowly he drew back into the shadows to watch and not be seen.

For abruptly two figures had appeared upon the rocky head of the
mountain across the lake. They had come up from the further side, and
when he saw them first stood clear-cut against the sky. They might have
been hunters since each carried a rifle. And yet the watcher's brows
gathered in a frown and his eyes gli