plied Helen, smiling. "But, Master Geographer, it
seems to me that you are putting in mountains and rivers which you have
never explored. How do you know that these turns and twists in the stream
exist as you represent them? and those spurs, which look so real, have
you not added them only to disguise the caterpillar character of your
range of hills!"

Hazel laughed as he confessed to drawing on his fancy for some little
details. But pleaded that all geographers, when they drew maps, were
licensed to fill in a few such touches, where discovery had failed to
supply particulars.

Helen had always believed religiously in maps, and was amused when she
reflected on her former credulity.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HELEN'S strength was coming back to her but slowly; she complained of
great lassitude and want of appetite. But, the following day having
cleared up, the sun shone out with great power and brilliancy. She gladly
welcomed the return of the fine weather, but Hazel shook his head; ten
days' rain was not their portion--the bad weather would return, and
complete the month or six weeks' winter to which Nature was entitled. The
next evening the appearance of the sky confirmed his opinion. The sun set
like a crimson shield; gory, and double its usual size. It entered into a
thick bank of dark violet cloud that lay on the horizon, and seemed to
split the vapor into rays, but of a dusky kind; immediately above this
crimson the clouds were of a brilliant gold, but higher they were the
color of rubies, and went gradually off to gray.

But as the orb dipped to the horizon a solid pile of unearthly clouds
came up from the southeast; their bodies were singularly and unnaturally
black, and mottled with copper-color, and hemmed with a fiery yellow. And
these infernal clouds towered up their heads, pressing forward as if they
all strove for precedency; it was like Milton's fiends attacking the sky.
The rate at which they climbed was wonderful. The sun set and the moon
rose full, and showed those angry masses surging upward and jostling each
other as they flew.

Yet below it was dead calm.

Having admired the sublimity of the scene, and seen the full moon rise,
but speedily lose her light in a brassy halo, they entered the hut, which
was now the headquarters, and they supped together there.

While they were eating their little meal the tops of the trees were heard
to sigh, so still was everything else. None the less did those stra