and drear, as weirdly
impressive as the cacti in a Mexican desert. Torn by winds, scarred by
lightnings, deeply rooted, tenacious as tradition, unlovely as Egyptian
mummies, fantastic, dwarfed and blackened, these unaccountable creatures
clung to the ledges. The dead mingled horribly with the living, and when
the wind arose--the wind that was robustly cheerful on the high
hills--these hags cried out with low moans of infinite despair. It was as
if they pleaded for water or for deliverance from a life that was a kind
of death.

The pale young man shuddered. "What a ghostly place!" he exclaimed, in a
low voice. "It seems the burial-place of a vanished race."

Something in his face, some note in his voice profoundly moved the girl.
For the first time her face showed something other than childish good
nature and a sense of humor. "I don't like these trees myself," she
answered. "They look too much like poor old squaws."

For a few moments the man and the maid studied the forest of immemorial,
gaunt, and withered trees--bright, impermanent youth confronting
time-defaced and wind-torn age. Then the girl spoke: "Let's get out of
here. I shall cry if we don't."

In a few moments the dolorous voices were left behind, and the cheerful
light of the plain reasserted itself. Norcross, looking back down upon
the cedars, which at a distance resembled a tufted, bronze-green carpet,
musingly asked: "What do you suppose planted those trees there?"

The girl was deeply impressed by the novelty of this query. "I never
thought to ask. I reckon they just grew."

"No, there's a reason for all these plantings," he insisted.

"We don't worry ourselves much about such things out here," she replied,
with charming humor. "We don't even worry about the weather. We just take
things as they come."

They walked on talking with new intimacy. "Where is your home?" he
asked.

"A few miles out of Bear Tooth. You're from the East, Bill says--'the far
East,' we call it."

"From New Haven. I've just finished at Yale. Have you ever been to New
York?"

"Oh, good Lord, no!" she answered, as though he had named the ends of the
earth. "My mother came from the South--she was born in Kentucky--that
accounts for my name, and my father is a Missourian. Let's see, Yale is
in the state of Connecticut, isn't it?"

"Connecticut is no longer a state; it is only a suburb of New York
City."

"Is that so? My geography calls it 'The Nutmeg State.'"

"Your