right marching over between his eyes; the
procession for the left, over the point. Silently, boldly, the mighty
host climbed his cheeks, surmounted the pass, and hurried down, till,
with many a desperate slap, Job at last sprang up, thoroughly awake.
Ants, ants, ants--millions of them! Ants in his shoes, ants running
off with his hat, ants in his pockets. It was an hour before the giant
had conquered the dwarfs and Job was asleep again, well out of the way
of any tree.

[Illustration: Mirror Lake, Yosemite.]

The sun was shining in his eyes, the Indian's little black cur had
come up and was barking at him from a respectful distance, and from
behind a tree Job heard a girl's merry laugh, when he awoke the next
morning.

CHAPTER XXII.

GLACIER POINT.

Mountains, mountains, mountains! Piled up like Titanic boulders,
snow-capped and ice-bound, tumbling down from the far-off glassy sides
of Mt. Lyell and Mt. Dana to the edge of that stupendous chasm.
Gleaming glaciers, great ice rivers, eternal snow drifts, dark, bare,
rugged peaks for a background. For a foreground, all the beauty of the
valley far below you, three thousand feet or more, as, holding your
breath, you gaze straight down the dizzy height from the projecting
table rock. El Capitan on the left, the Yosemite Falls dancing down in
three great leaps opposite; the Half Dome and Cloud's Rest off to the
right, Vernal and Nevada Falls pouring their torrent over the cliffs
at your side, the Hetchy-Hetchy Valley, the rolling plateau that
stretches back to the perpetual snow and rising peaks behind you. All
language falters here. Tongue can never describe, only the soul feels,
the awfulness, the vastness, the sublimity, the stupendousness, the
wild grandeur of the scene. Such is Glacier Point.

Here, speechless, overawed, and with the loftiest emotions sweeping
over their souls, Job Malden and Jane Reed stood alone amid a silence
broken only by the sighing of the trees back of them.

It was toward sunset of a June afternoon. For hours they had been
climbing up the long, steep, winding trail that picks its way along
the side of the cliff from back of the Valley Chapel toward Sentinel
Peak, over the jutting point, and over the cliff's edge to this
wonderful spot. Weary and foot-sore, they had reached it, only to have
all thought of self overwhelmed and forgotten in that vision of
visions which burst upon their eyes and souls. How long they stood
there in