thicker boots for change."

Suan Isco never ran. That manner of motion was foreign to her, at
least as we accomplish it. When speed was required, she attained it
by increased length of stride and great vigor of heel. In this way she
conquered distance steadily, and with very little noise.

The air, and the light, and the beauty of the mountains were a sudden
joy to me. In front of us all strode Sampson Gundry, clearing all
tangles with a short, sharp axe, and mounting steep places as if
twoscore were struck off his threescore years and five. From time to
time he turned round to laugh, or see that his men and trained bullocks
were right; and then, as his bright eyes met my dark ones, he seemed
to be sorry for the noise he made. On the other hand, I was ashamed of
damping any one's pleasure by being there.

But I need not have felt any fear about this. Like all other children,
I wrapped myself up too much in my own importance, and behaved as if
my state of mind was a thing to be considered. But the longer we rose
through the freedom and the height, the lighter grew the heart of every
one, until the thick forest of pines closed round us, and we walked in a
silence that might be felt.

Hence we issued forth upon the rough bare rock, and after much trouble
with the cattle, and some bruises, stood panting on a rugged cone, or
crest, which had once been crowned with a Titan of a tree. The tree
was still there, but not its glory; for, alas! the mighty trunk lay
prostrate--a grander column than ever was or will be built by human
hands. The tapering shaft stretched out of sight for something like a
furlong, and the bulk of the butt rose over us so that we could not see
the mountains. Having never seen any such tree before, I must have been
amazed if I had been old enough to comprehend it.

Sampson Gundry, large as he was, and accustomed to almost every thing,
collected his men and the whole of his team on the ground-floor or area
of the stump before he would say any thing. Here we all looked so
sadly small that several of the men began to laugh; the bullocks seemed
nothing but raccoons or beavers to run on the branches or the fibres of
the tree; and the chains and the shackles, and the blocks and cranes,
and all the rest of the things they meant to use, seemed nothing
whatever, or at all to be considered, except as a spider's web upon this
tree.

The sagacious bullocks, who knew quite well what they were expected to
do, lo