dn't be HIM--"

Sol was conscious of a significant feminine pressure on his right arm.
He was equal to the emergency. "I think not," he said dubiously, "unless
your brother's hair is much darker than yours. Yes! now I look at you,
yours is brown. He has a mole on his right cheek hasn't he?"

The red came quickly back to Rand's boyish face. He laughed. "No, sir:
my brother's hair is, if any thing, a shade lighter than mine, and nary
mole. Come along!"

And leading the way, Rand disclosed the narrow steps winding down to the
shelf on which the cabin hung. "Be careful," said Rand, taking the now
unresisting hand of the "Marysville Pet" as they descended: "a step that
way, and down you go two thousand feet on the top of a pine-tree."

But the girl's slight cry of alarm was presently changed to one of
unaffected pleasure as they stood on the rocky platform. "It isn't a
house: it's a NEST, and the loveliest!" said Euphemia breathlessly.

"It's a scene, a perfect scene, sir!" said Sol, enraptured. "I shall
take the liberty of bringing my scene-painter to sketch it some day.
It would do for 'The Mountaineer's Bride' superbly, or," continued
the little man, warming through the blue-black border of his face with
professional enthusiasm, "it's enough to make a play itself. 'The Cot on
the Crags.' Last scene--moonlight--the struggle on the ledge! The Lady
of the Crags throws herself from the beetling heights!--A shriek from
the depths--a woman's wail!"

"Dry up!" sharply interrupted Rand, to whom this speech recalled his
brother's half-forgotten strangeness. "Look at the prospect."

In the full noon of a cloudless day, beneath them a tumultuous sea of
pines surged, heaved, rode in giant crests, stretched and lost itself
in the ghostly, snow-peaked horizon. The thronging woods choked every
defile, swept every crest, filled every valley with its dark-green
tilting spears, and left only Table Mountain sunlit and bare. Here and
there were profound olive depths, over which the gray hawk hung lazily,
and into which blue jays dipped. A faint, dull yellowish streak marked
an occasional watercourse; a deeper reddish ribbon, the mountain road
and its overhanging murky cloud of dust.

"Is it quite safe here?" asked Mrs. Sol, eying the little cabin. "I mean
from storms?"

"It never blows up here," replied Rand, "and nothing happens."

"It must be lovely," said Euphemia, clasping her hands.

"It IS that," said Rand proudly. "It's fo