fall is the stream itself, foaming down through
the bowlders, or lying in deep limpid pools which reflect the sky and the
forest. The water is as cold as ice and as clear as cut glass; few
mountain streams in the world, probably, are so absolutely without color.
"I followed it up once," King was saying, by way of filling in the pauses
with personal revelations, "to the source. The woods on the side are
dense and impenetrable, and the only way was to keep in the stream and
climb over the bowlders. There are innumerable slides and cascades and
pretty falls, and a thousand beauties and surprises. I finally came to a
marsh, a thicket of alders, and around this the mountain closed in an
amphitheatre of naked perpendicular rock a thousand feet high. I made my
way along the stream through the thicket till I came to a great bank and
arch of snow--it was the last of July--from under which the stream
flowed. Water dripped in many little rivulets down the face of the
precipices--after a rain there are said to be a thousand cascades there.
I determined to climb to the summit, and go back by the Tip-top House.
It does not look so from a little distance, but there is a rough, zigzag
sort of path on one side of the amphitheatre, and I found this, and
scrambled up. When I reached the top the sun was shining, and although
there was nothing around me but piles of granite rocks, without any sign
of a path, I knew that I had my bearings so that I could either reach the
house or a path leading to it. I stretched myself out to rest a few
moments, and suddenly the scene was completely shut in by a fog. [Irene
put out her hand and touched King's.] I couldn't tell where the sun was,
or in what direction the hut lay, and the danger was that I would wander
off on a spur, as the lost usually do. But I knew where the ravine was,
for I was still on the edge of it."

"Why," asked Irene, trembling at the thought of that danger so long ago
--"why didn't you go back down the ravine?"

"Because," and King took up the willing little hand and pressed it to his
lips, and looked steadily in her eyes--"because that is not my way. It
was nothing. I made what I thought was a very safe calculation, starting
from the ravine as a base, to strike the Crawford bridle-path at least a
quarter of a mile west of the house. I hit it--but it shows how little
one can tell of his course in a fog--I struck it within a rod of the
house! It was lucky for me that I did not go t