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XIV.

THE ORDEAL

I.

Nowhere could the idea of peace be more serenely, more majestically,
expressed. The lofty purple mountains limited the horizon, and in their
multitude and imposing symmetry bespoke the vast intentions of beneficent
creation. The valley, glooming low, harbored all the shadows. The air was
still, the sky as pellucid as crystal, and where a crag projected boldly
from the forests, the growths of balsam fir extending almost to the
brink, it seemed as if the myriad fibres of the summit-line of foliage
might be counted, so finely drawn, so individual, was each against the
azure. Below the boughs the road swept along the crest of the crag and
thence curved inward, and one surveying the scene from the windows of a
bungalow at no great distance could look straight beyond the point of the
precipice and into the heart of the sunset, still aflare about the west.

But the realization of solitude was poignant and might well foster fear.
It was too wild a country, many people said, for quasi-strangers, and the
Briscoes were not justified in lingering so long at their summer cottage
here in the Great Smoky Mountains after the hotel of the neighboring
springs was closed for the season, and its guests and employees all
vanished town-ward. Hitherto, however, the Briscoes had flouted the
suggestion, protesting that this and not the spring was the "sweet o' the
year." The autumn always found the fires flaring on the cosy hearths of
their pretty bungalow, and they were wont to gaze entranced on the
chromatic pageantry of the forests as the season waned. Presently the
Indian summer would steal upon them unaware, with its wild sweet airs,
the burnished glamours of its soft red sun, its dreamy, poetic,
amethystine haze. Now, too, came the crowning opportunity of sylvan
sport. There were deer to stalk and to course with horses, hound