tween the mountains and the heavens, later in the
day, and flung bewildering, dreamy shadows on the far-off steeps, and
dropped a gracious veil over the bald forehead and sun-bleak shoulders
of Feather-Cap. It was "weather just made for them," as fortunate
excursionists are wont to say.

Sin Saxon was all life, and spring, and fun. She climbed at least three
Feather-Caps, dancing from stone to stone with tireless feet, and
bounding back and forth with every gay word that it occurred to her to
say to anybody. Pictures? She made them incessantly. She was a living
dissolving view. You no sooner got one bright look or graceful attitude
than it was straightway shifted into another. She kept Frank Scherman at
her side for the first half-hour, and then, perhaps, his admiration or
his muscles tired, for he fell back a little to help Madam Routh up a
sudden ridge, and afterwards, somehow, merged himself in the quieter
group of strangers.

By and by one of the Arnalls whispered to Mattie Shannon,--"He's sidled
off with her, at last. Did you ever know such a fellow for a new face?
But it's partly the petticoat. He's such an artist's eye for color. He
was raving about her all the while she stood hanging those shawls among
the pines to keep the wind from Mrs. Linceford. She isn't downright
pretty either. But she's got up exquisitely!"

Leslie Goldthwaite, in her lovely mountain dress, her bright bloom from
enjoyment and exercise, with the stray light through the pines
burnishing the bronze of her hair, had innocently made a second picture,
it would seem. One such effects deeper impression, sometimes, than the
confusing splendor of incessant changes.

"Are you looking for something? Can I help you?" Frank Scherman had
said, coming up to her, as she and her friend Dakie, a little apart from
the others, were poising among some loose pebbles.

"Nothing that I have lost," Leslie answered, smiling. "Something I have
a very presumptuous wish to find. A splendid garnet geode, if you
please!"

"That's not at all impossible," returned the young man. "We'll have it
before we go down,--see if we don't!"

Frank Scherman knew a good deal about Feather-Cap, and something of
geologizing. So he and Leslie--Dakie Thayne, in his unswerving devotion,
still accompanying--"sidled off" together, took a long turn round under
the crest, talking very pleasantly--and restfully, after Sin Saxon's
continuous brilliancy--all the way. How they searched am