earing, with cheerful philosophy and the
hopefulness of a future unfettered by their past, the final
disappointment of their quest. If they ever met again, they would
laugh and remember; if they did not, they would forget without a sigh.
He hurriedly dressed himself, and went outside to dip his face and
hands in the bucket that stood beside the door; but the clear air, the
dazzling sunshine, and the unexpected prospect half intoxicated him.

The abandoned mill stretched beside him in all the pathos of its
premature decay. The ribs of the water-wheel appeared amid a tangle of
shrubs and driftwood, and were twined with long grasses and straggling
vines; mounds of sawdust and heaps of "brush" had taken upon themselves
a velvety moss where the trickling slime of the vanished river lost
itself in sluggish pools, discolored with the dyes of redwood. But on
the other side of the rocky ledge dropped the whole length of the
valley, alternately bathed in sunshine or hidden in drifts of white and
clinging smoke. The upper end of the long canyon, and the crests of
the ridge above him, were lost in this fleecy cloud, which at times
seemed to overflow the summits and fall in slow leaps like lazy
cataracts down the mountain-side. Only the range before the ledge was
clear; there the green pines seemed to swell onward and upward in long
mounting billows, until at last they broke against the sky.

In the keen stimulus of the hour and the air Key felt the mountaineer's
longing for action, and scarcely noticed that Collinson had
pathetically brought out his pork barrel to scrape together a few
remnants for his last meal. It was not until he had finished his
coffee, and Collinson had brought up his horse, that a slight sense of
shame at his own and his comrades' selfishness embarrassed his parting
with his patient host. He himself was going to Skinner's to plead for
him; he knew that Parker had left the draft,--he had seen it lying in
the bar,--but a new sense of delicacy kept him from alluding to it now.
It was better to leave Collinson with his own peculiar ideas of the
responsibilities of hospitality unchanged. Key shook his hand warmly,
and galloped up the rocky slope. But when he had finally reached the
higher level, and fancied he could even now see the dust raised by his
departing comrades on their two diverging paths, although he knew that
they had already gone their different ways,--perhaps never to meet
again,--his thoug