e.

"No, Bill, I want to sleep on that bank, in the tanbark beside the
brook."

"It'll keep ye awake. Awful noisy critter."

"I don't care if it does. Besides, it won't. I'll pretend I'm a
goldfish, and the mountain torrent is my home."

Bill grinned at that.

"Ye goin' to be a goldfish, too, Mr. Trent?"

"I'll roll up here by the fire."

"I'll take the cabin myself, then. Can ye keep awake till I clean up
camp, or shall I shake down some beds now?"

"No, no, you go ahead with the housekeeping. We won't go to bed for
hours," Bob answered.

She led the way up the trail a bit, Paul following.

"Bill has real tact--he's there when you want him, and only then."

"It is as near ideal as it can be," Paul assented. "You and I, and the
world away," he added.

"There isn't any world--there's just earth and sky and God," said Bob
softly.

"What about us?"

"We aren't us. We're blue shadows; the night will sap us up."

"No, no, I'm just beginning to be glad I'm I--to know what it means to
live," he protested.

"I wonder if that is something to be glad for?" she mused.

It grew so dark that when Bill's shout reached them Paul had to grope
his way down the trail first, Bob's hands on his shoulders as she came
after him. Bill ordered them to turn in. They were to get an early
start, and they needed sleep, because they were not broken in yet, they
were still soft.

"There's a rocky bowl full of mounting water down there, where ye can
wash," he said, pointing. "Here's yer bed, Mrs. Bob, and yer blankets is
over there by the fire, Mr. Trent. I'll call ye in the mornin', if the
sun don't git ye up."

He disappeared into the cabin, where a candle showed through the door.

"Let's go look at the bath-tub," said Bob. They clung together and
made their way to the spot where the rocks made a pool. The moon was up,
but the trees threw mysterious shadows across the water. Bob took a
stick and plumbed it.

"It isn't deep."

"No, only noisy, I think."

"Paul, I'm going in. You go off up there in that clump of trees, so I
can call you, if I drown."

"You aren't going into that torrent now, in the dark!"

"Yes, I am."

"You're crazy!"

"Please let me. It's perfectly safe, and I never wanted to do anything
so much in my life."

"You funny child!" he said, and walked off, according to orders.

Bob slid out of her clothes and plunged boldly into the icy torrent. She
jumped up and down and squealed, she tried to