dened to walking, became easy and swift. I think there were
hours when we must have covered our four miles, and even on long, upward
slopes we must have made better than three. There is in swift walking,
when the muscles are hard, the wind long, and the atmosphere
exhilarating, a buoyant rhythm that more, perhaps, than merited success,
or valorous conduct, smoothes out the creases in a man's soul. And so
quick is a man to recover from his own baseness, and to ape outwardly
his transient inner feelings, that I found myself presently, walking
with a high head and a mind full of martial thoughts.

All that day, except for a short halt at noon, we followed the river
across the great natural park; now paralleling its convolutions, and now
cutting diagonals. Late in the afternoon we came to the end of the park
land. A more or less precipitous formation of glistening quartz marked
its boundary, and into a fissure of this the stream, now a small river,
plunged with accelerated speed. The going became difficult. The walls of
the fissure through which the river rushed were smooth and water-worn,
impossible to ascend; and between the brink of the river and the base of
the walls were congestions of boulders, jammed drift-wood, and tangled
alder bushes. There were times when we had to crawl upon our hands and
knees, under one log and over the next. To add to our difficulties
darkness was swiftly falling, and we were glad, indeed, when the wall of
the fissure leaned at length so far from the perpendicular that we were
able to scramble up it. We found ourselves upon a levelish little meadow
of grass. In the centre of it there grew a monstrous and gigantic
live-oak, between two of whose roots there glittered a spring. On all
sides of the meadow, except on that toward the river, were
superimpending cliffs of quartz. Along the base of these was a dense
growth of bushes.

"We'll rest here," said the groom. "What a place. It's a natural
fortress. Only one way into it." He stood looking down at the noisy
river and considering the steep slope we had just climbed. "See this
boulder?" he said. "It's wobbly. If that damned longshoreman tries to
get us here, all we've got to do is to choose the psychological moment
and push it over on him."

The groom looked quite bellicose and daring. Suddenly he flung his
fragment of a cap high into the air and at the very top of his lungs
cried: "Liberty!"

The echoes answered him, and the glorious, abuse