ompanions, laughing and jeering at our
struggles."

But when the sound of her companions' voices died away, and their
figures were swallowed up in the darkness behind the snow, she
forgot all this, and much else that was mundane and frivolous, in the
impressive and majestic solitude which seemed to descend upon her from
the obscurity above.

At first it was accompanied with a slight thrill of vague fear, but this
passed presently into that profound peace which the mountains alone can
give their lonely or perturbed children. It seemed to her that Nature
was never the same, on the great plains where men and cities always
loomed into such ridiculous proportions, as when the Great Mother raised
herself to comfort them with smiling hillsides, or encompassed them and
drew them closer in the loving arms of her mountains. The long white
canada stretched before her in a purity that did not seem of the earth;
the vague bulk of the mountains rose on either side of her in a mystery
that was not of this life. Yet it was not oppressive; neither was its
restfulness and quiet suggestive of obliviousness and slumber; on the
contrary, the highly rarefied air seemed to give additional keenness
to her senses; her hearing had become singularly acute; her eyesight
pierced the uttermost extremity of the gorge, lit by the full moon that
occasionally shone through slowly drifting clouds. Her nerves thrilled
with a delicious sense of freedom and a strange desire to run or climb.
It seemed to her, in her exalted fancy, that these solitudes should be
peopled only by a kingly race, and not by such gross and material churls
as this mountaineer who helped them. And, I grieve to say,--writing
of an idealist that WAS, and a heroine that IS to be,--she was getting
outrageously hungry.

There were a few biscuits in her traveling-bag, and she remembered that
she had been presented with a small jar of California honey at San Jose.
This she took out and opened on the seat before her, and spreading the
honey on the biscuits, ate them with a keen schoolgirl relish and a
pleasant suggestion of a sylvan picnic in spite of the cold. It was all
very strange; quite an experience for her to speak of afterwards. People
would hardly believe that she had spent an hour or two, all alone, in a
deserted wagon in a mountain snow pass. It was an adventure such as
one reads of in the magazines. Only something was lacking which
the magazines always supplied,--something he