ancing screen into the glare, rippled like a madcap sea,
and flashed in countless sheets of blinding facets. As if an unseen
hand had touched a thousand granite springs above the Gap, every
slender crevice spouted a stream that shot foaming out from the
mountainsides. The sound of moving waters rose in a dull, vast roar,
broken by the unseen boom of distant falls, launching huge masses of
water into caverns far below. The storm-laden wind tore and swirled
among the crowded peaks, and above all the angry sky moaned and
quivered in the rage of the elements.

Nan leaned within de Spain's arm. "If this keeps up," he said after
some time, "our best play is to give up crossing to-night. We might
hide somewhere on the mountain to-morrow, and try it toward evening."

"Yes, if we have to," she answered. But he perceived her reluctant
assent. "What I am afraid of, Henry, is, if they were to find us. You
know what I mean."

"Then we won't hide," he replied. "The minute we get the chance we
will run for it. This is too fierce to last long."

"Oh, but it's November!" Nan reminded him apprehensively. "It's
winter; that's what makes it so cold. You never can tell in
November."

"It won't last all night, anyway," he answered with confidence.

Despite his assurance, however, it did last all night, and it was
only the lulls between the sharp squalls that enabled them to cover
the trail before daylight. When they paused before El Capitan the fury
of the night seemed largely to have exhausted itself, but the
overcharged air hung above the mountains, trembling and moaning like a
bruised and stricken thing. Lightning, playing across the inky
heavens, blazed in constant sheets from end to end of the horizon. Its
quivering glare turned the wild night into a kind of ghastly,
uncertain day. Thunder, hoarse with invective, and hurled mercilessly
back and forth by the fitful wind, drew farther and farther into the
recess of the mountains, only to launch its anger against its own
imprisoned echoes. Under it all the two refugees, high on the
mountainside, looked down on the flooding Gap.

Their flight was almost ended. Only the sheer cliff ahead blocked
their descent to the aspen grove. De Spain himself had already crossed
El Capitan once, and he had done it at night--but it was not, he was
compelled to remind himself, on a night like this. It seemed now a
madman's venture and, without letting himself appear to do so, he
watched Nan's face