the following colloquy seemed
the more grotesque and incongruous from being the apparent expression
of an upright monolith, ten feet high, on the right, and another mass of
granite, that, reclining, peeped over the verge.

"Hello!"

"Hello yourself!"

"You're late."

"I lost the trail, and climbed up the slide."

Here followed a stumble, the clatter of stones down the mountain-side,
and an oath so very human and undignified that it at once relieved the
bowlders of any complicity of expression. The voices, too, were close
together now, and unexpectedly in quite another locality.

"Anything up?"

"Looey Napoleon's declared war agin Germany."

"Sho-o-o!"

Notwithstanding this exclamation, the interest of the latter speaker was
evidently only polite and perfunctory. What, indeed, were the political
convulsions of the Old World to the dwellers on this serene, isolated
eminence of the New?

"I reckon it's so," continued the first voice. "French Pete and that
thar feller that keeps the Dutch grocery hev hed a row over it; emptied
their six-shooters into each other. The Dutchman's got two balls in
his leg, and the Frenchman's got an onnessary buttonhole in his
shirt-buzzum, and hez caved in."

This concise, local corroboration of the conflict of remote nations,
however confirmatory, did not appear to excite any further interest.
Even the last speaker, now that he was in this calm, dispassionate
atmosphere, seemed to lose his own concern in his tidings, and to have
abandoned every thing of a sensational and lower-worldly character in
the pines below. There were a few moments of absolute silence, and then
another stumble. But now the voices of both speakers were quite patient
and philosophical.

"Hold on, and I'll strike a light," said the second speaker. "I brought
a lantern along, but I didn't light up. I kem out afore sundown, and you
know how it allers is up yer. I didn't want it, and didn't keer to light
up. I forgot you're always a little dazed and strange-like when you
first come up."

There was a crackle, a flash, and presently a steady glow, which the
surrounding darkness seemed to resent. The faces of the two men thus
revealed were singularly alike. The same thin, narrow outline of jaw and
temple; the same dark, grave eyes; the same brown growth of curly beard
and mustache, which concealed the mouth, and hid what might have been
any individual idiosyncrasy of thought or expression,--showed them to
be