n, and
terminated suddenly at an immense gateway of stone. Here the mountain
had been torn asunder, and two palisades of gray-green rock rose grim
and terrible for hundreds of feet, while between them, dashing over
boulders and trees and the impedimenta of ages, a little stream rushed
along in the eternal night at their base. Far away to the west, range
upon range piled themselves against the intense blue sky. Beyond a
rustic gate, standing across the path that narrowed to a few feet
before the wall of stone, a park, sparkling and green in the sunlight,
was visible. They stopped and regarded the two gateways,--one the work
of nature, the other the feeble counterfeit of man,--and then swinging
open the creaking wooden affair, passed into the peaceful valley. A
few yards away stood a small log cabin, but the chimney was smokeless,
and though the chickens clucked in the yard, and a collie lay on the
doorstep, it seemed desolate and deserted.

Passing along an almost invisible trail, they found themselves in the
wildest and most remote part of that wild and remote region. They saw
a few stray animals, but no human beings. This was one of the few
places where mining was not a universal pursuit, and it was too early
to do much in the few mines that did exist. There are entire sections
in the Rockies that are deserted for more than half the year, and this
was one of them. That day there was no one at the signal station. The
keeper had gone down to the valley for fresh stores, and to learn
something of the terrific disturbances that were said to be
threatening the entire Eastern coast with annihilation. Perhaps the
owners of the log cabin had made a similar pilgrimage.

The scene was flooded with moonlight when the travellers passed the
gate on their homeward way, and sat down on a boulder a few yards
without the frowning portal. The night was cold, and the woman had put
on her jacket, and sunk her numbed fingers in its pockets. In spite of
her weariness she was troubled and restless, and turning looked first
at the beetling crags back of them, then away over the plain at the
twinkling lights of the town below. They heard indistinctly the sounds
of bells ringing wildly, and overhead flocks of birds circled and
called with shrill, uncanny voices. Yet the moonlight was so bright
that they saw each other as plainly as if it were day, and its placid
radiance seemed strangely at variance with the disturbed wild-fowl,
and certain w