wo hands, was as motionless and as silent as the cliff itself; while,
with her face turned upward, she searched with keen eyes the rim of the
gorge; her free, right hand resting upon the butt of the revolver at her
hip. Then she went on--not timidly, but neither carelessly; not in the
least frightened, but still,--knowing that the spot was far from the more
frequented paths,--with experienced care.

As her head and shoulders came above the rim, she paused again, to search
with careful eyes the vicinity of the trail that from this point leads for
a little way down the knife-like ridge of the spur, and then, by easier
stages, around the shoulder and the flank of the mountain, to Burnt Pine
Camp. When no living object met her eye, and she could hear no sound save
the lonely wind in the pines and the faint murmur of the stream in the
gorge below, she took the few steps that yet remained of the climb, and
seated herself for a moment's well-earned rest. Some small animal, she
told herself,--a squirrel or a wood-rat, perhaps,--frightened at her
approach, and scurrying hastily to cover, had dislodged the pebbles with
the slight noise that she had heard.

From where she sat with her back against the trunk of a great pine, she
could see--far below, and beyond the immediate spurs and shoulders of the
range, on the farther side of the gorge out of which she had just
come--the lower end of Clear Creek canyon, and, miles away, under the
blue haze of the distance, the dark squares of the orange groves of
Fairlands.

Somewhere between those canyon gates and the little city in the orange
groves, the girl knew that Aaron King and his friend were making their way
back to the world of men. With her eyes fixed upon the distant scene, as
if striving for a wholly impossible strength of vision to mark the tiny,
moving spots that she knew were there, the girl upon the high rim of the
wild and lonely mountain gorge was lost to her surroundings, in an effort,
as vain, to see her comrade of the weeks just past, in the years that were
to come. Would the friendship born in the hills endure in the world beyond
the canyon gates? Could it endure away from those scenes that had given it
birth? Was it possible for a fellowship, established in the free
atmosphere of the mountains, to live in the lower altitude of Fairlands?
Sibyl Andres,--as she sat there, alone in the hills she loved,--in her
heart of hearts, answered her own questions, "No." But still