owing to the dust, approached the window, and the pale, stern
face of a dignified, white-haired woman of sixty that looked from it.

"Has he gone?" said the lady.

"Assuredly, madame; I was with him at the station."

"And you think no one saw him?"

"No one, madame, but myself."

"And--what kind of a man was he?"

Monsieur Ribaud lifted his shoulders, threw out his hands despairingly,
yet with a world of significance, and said:--

"An American."

"Ah!"

The carriage drove on and entered the gates of the chateau. And Monsieur
Ribaud, cafe proprietor and Social Democrat, straightened himself in the
dust and shook his fist after it.

A NIGHT ON THE DIVIDE

With the lulling of the wind towards evening it came on to
snow--heavily, in straight, quickly succeeding flakes, dropping like
white lances from the sky. This was followed by the usual Sierran
phenomenon. The deep gorge, which, as the sun went down, had lapsed into
darkness, presently began to reappear; at first the vanished trail came
back as a vividly whitening streak before them; then the larches and
pines that ascended from it like buttresses against the hillsides
glimmered in ghostly distinctness, until at last the two slopes curved
out of the darkness as if hewn in marble. For the sudden storm, which
extended scarcely two miles, had left no trace upon the steep granite
face of the high cliffs above; the snow, slipping silently from them,
left them still hidden in the obscurity of night. In the vanished
landscape the gorge alone stood out, set in a chaos of cloud and storm
through which the moonbeams struggled ineffectually.

It was this unexpected sight which burst upon the occupants of a large
covered "station wagon" who had chanced upon the lower end of the gorge.
Coming from a still lower altitude, they had known nothing of the storm,
which had momentarily ceased, but had left a record of its intensity
in nearly two feet of snow. For some moments the horses floundered and
struggled on, in what the travelers believed to be some old forgotten
drift or avalanche, until the extent and freshness of the fall became
apparent. To add to their difficulties, the storm recommenced, and not
comprehending its real character and limit, they did not dare to attempt
to return the way they came. To go on, however, was impossible. In this
quandary they looked about them in vain for some other exit from the
gorge. The sides of that gigantic white furrow ter