rounded by precipices
topped with scrubby, wind-blown pines and oaks--a wild and rocky descent
into mystery and seclusion. Here and there a slender thread of smoke,
intensely blue, rose circling and filtering through the purple density
against a black-green background of hemlocks.

Contrasted with the view on the other side, so celestially fair, this
seemed to present something sinister, yet weirdly beautiful--a baffling,
untamed wilderness. Along this ridge the road ran straight before them
for a distance, stony and bleak, and the air swept over it sweet and
strong from the sea, far away.

"Wait--wait a moment," he called, as his panting horse rounded the last
curve of the climb, and she had already put her own to a gallop. She
reined in sharply and came back to him, a glowing vision. "Stand a
moment near me. We'll let our horses rest a bit and ourselves, too.
There is strength and vitality in this air; breathe it in deeply. What
joy to be alive!"

She came near, and their horses held quiet communion, putting their
noses together contentedly. Cassandra lifted her head high and turned
her face toward the billowed mountains, and did what Thryng had not
known her to do, what he had wondered if she ever did-- She
laughed--laughed aloud and joyously.

"Why do you laugh?" he asked, and laughed with her.

"I'm that glad all at once. I don't know why. If the mountains could
feel and be glad, seems like they'd be laughing now away off there by
the sea. I wonder will I ever see the ocean."

"Of course you will. You are not going to live always shut up in these
mountains. Laugh again. Let me hear you."

But she turned on him startled eyes. "I clean forgot that poor man down
below, so like to die I am 'most afraid to get back there. Look down. It
must have been in a place like that where Christian slew Apollyon in the
dark valley, like I was reading to Hoyle last night."

"Does he live down in there? I mean the man Irwin--not Apollyon. He's
dead, for Christian slew him."

"Yes, the Irwins live there. See yonder that spot of cleared red ground?
There's their place. The house is hid by the dark trees nigh the red
spot. Can you make it out?"

"Yes, but I call that far."

"It's easy riding. Shall we go on? I'm that frightened--we'd better
hurry."

"Is that your way when you are afraid to do a thing; you hurry to do it
all the more?"

"Seems like we have to a heap of times. Seems like if I were only a man,
I could be