it was freed from clouds and mists it stood
alone in its peculiar grandeur. Unlike all the others it wore no
diadem of snow. Some terrible convulsion of nature, some cataclysm at
its birth or in the fiery days of its youth, had left it bald-headed,
ugly, and deformed. But for that catastrophe it would have been far
loftier than any of its fellows; and even now the hunchback towered
among them, its flat head level with their pointed peaks, the most
conspicuous figure in the imposing pageant raised against the western
sky.

And its deformity was not the whole of its misfortune. It bore the
brunt of every tempest that broke upon that massive barrier of
mountains. Its granite head was the very breeding-place of storms. The
peaks around it had their days of calm, but Thunder Mountain never. An
hour or two perhaps--no more. It knew no peace. The elements were, and
are now, and forever will be quarreling upon its worn and battered
head; lightning and rain and snow and wind are forever hammering and
beating it turn by turn. It is the Quasimodo and the Lear and the Gray
Friar of mountains, all in one. And if, on some still and perfect day,
its tonsured head emerges from the clouds, the watcher in the Park has
but to turn his head a moment, and look again, and lo! it wears its
gray cowl as before, and stoops growling and grumbling under its
endless punishment.

Suddenly, as Marion looked, the silence was rudely shattered. Roll on
roll of thunder swept across the valley, crashed against the hills,
rebounded from wall to wall of mountains, until all the Park was
filled with the sullen bellowing. And then, amid all the tumult,
Marion heard something more,--a voice that mingled with the voice of
the mountain, and thrilled her while it filled her with a singular
disquietude. She had dismissed Haig from her thoughts. She was sure of
that. And yet through all the uproar, and in the tense silence that
ensued, she heard his taunting voice:

"And you came straight to me!"

CHAPTER II

THE ROAD TO PARADISE

The gap in the fence remained exactly as it had been when it invited
her to adventure. But now she halted there, dismounted, and picked up
the end of a wire that lay trailing on the ground. With new-found
interest she examined the fracture, and stared at it in wonder.
Dropping it, and kneeling excitedly in the grass, she searched
another, and still another wire, and with the same result. Even to her
unpractised eye the f