of the stones that did their best to keep us
back, we simply hung on the breathing of the motor, as Mamma used to on
mine when I was small and indulged in croup. When she gasped, we gasped
too; when she seemed to falter, we involuntarily strained as if the
working of our muscles could aid hers. All our bodies sympathized with
the efforts of her body, which she was making for our sakes, dragging us
up, up, into wonderful white, shining spaces where it seemed that summer
never had been and never would dare to come.

The twisted skein of silk we had looked up to was turning into a coil of
rope now, stretched taut and sharp from zig to zag, and on from zag to
zig again. Below, when we dared to look back and down, the coil of rope
lay looser, curled on itself. The mountain-top crowned by the fort
(which as Mr. Barrymore said, did certainly look like the ark on Ararat
when all the rest of creation was swept off the globe) didn't appear so
dimly remote now. We were coming almost into friendly relations with it,
and with neighbouring mountains whose summits had seemed, a little while
ago, as far away as Kingdom Come.

I began to feel at last as if I could speak without danger of giving the
motor palpitation of the heart. "What are you thinking of, Maida?" I
almost whispered.

"Oh!" she answered with a start, as if I'd waked her out of a dream. "I
was thinking, what if, while we're still in this world we could see
heaven, a far, shining city on a mountain-top like one of these. How
much harder we would strive after worthiness if we _saw_ the place
always with our bodily eyes; how much harder we'd try; and how much
less credit it would be for those who succeeded."

"What are _you_ thinking of, Mamma?" I asked. "Did the big mountains
give you a thought too?"

"Yes, they did," said she, "but I'm afraid it was more worldly than
Maida's. I was saying to myself, the difference in being down far below,
where we were, and high up as we are now, is like our old life in Denver
and our life here." As she went on to expound her parable, she lowered
her voice, so that Sir Ralph and Mr. Barrymore, walking, couldn't catch
a word. "In those days at home, it would have seemed as impossible that
we could have princes and baronets and--and such people for our most
_intimate_ friends, as it looked a little while ago for us to get near
that fort up there, or the mountain-tops. Yet we are, in--in every sense
of the word, _getting there_."

Th