of track curving away up the mountain side in one direction, and in the other lost in a deep cut in the hills; at the steep red banks rising high on each side, arched over by leafy forest growth, with all the interlacing branches and smallest twigs bearing their delicate burden of white, feathery snow. He caught his breath as a sense of the strange, untamed beauty, marvellous and utterly lonely, struck upon him. Beyond the tracks, high up on the mountain slope, he thought he spied, well-nigh hid from sight by the pines, the gambrel roof of a large building—or was it a snow-covered rock?

"Is that a house up there?" he asked, turning to the girl, who sat leaning forward and looking steadily down at him.

"That is the hotel."

"A road must lead to it, then. If I could get up there, I could send down for my things."

"They is no one thar," piped the boy; and Thryng remembered the brakeman's words, and how he had rebelled at the thought of a hotel incongruously set amid this primeval beauty; but now he longed for the comfort of a warm room and tea at a hospitable table. He wished he had accepted the bishop's invitation. It was a predicament to be dropped in this wild spot, without a store, a cabin, or even a thread of blue smoke to be seen as indicating a human habitation, and no soul near save these two children.

The sun was sinking toward the western hilltops, and a chillness began creeping about him as the shadows lengthened across the base of the mountain, leaving only the heights in the glowing light.

"Really, you know, I can't say what I am to do. I'm a stranger here—"

It seemed odd to him at the moment, but her face, framed in the huge sunbonnet,—a delicate flower set in a rough calyx,—suddenly lost all expression. She[Pg 5] did not move nor open her lips. Thryng thought he detected a look of fear in the boy's eyes, as he crept closer to her.

[Pg 5]

In a flash came to him the realization of the difficulty. His friend had told him of these people,—their occupations, their fear of the world outside and below their fastnesses, and how zealously they guarded their homes and their rights from outside intrusion, yet how hospitable and generous they were to all who could not be considered their hereditary enemies.

He hastened to speak reassuring words, and, bethinking himself that she had 

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