n virtues. A sportswoman to the last hair,
she simply did not wish to depress him with her fears. There was a
suspense, a strange hush and breathlessness in the air that depressed
her.

The same restlessness that she observed in the wild creatures began to
be noticeable in the horses. Time after time they bolted from the
trail, and the efforts of all the party were needed to round them up
again. Their morale--a high degree of which is as essential in a pack
train as in an army--was breaking before her eyes. They seemed to
have no spirit to leap the logs and battle the quagmire. They would try
to encircle the hills rather than attempt to climb them.

She wondered if the animals had a sixth sense. She was a wide-awake,
observing girl, and throughout the trip she had noticed instances of a
forewarning instinct that she herself did not possess. On each occasion
where the horses were more or less unmanageable she found, on
progressing farther, some dangerous obstacle to their progress,--a
steep hill or a treacherous marsh. Could it be that they were
forewarned now?

Fatigue came quickly this afternoon, and by four o'clock she was longing
for food and rest. She was cold, the snow had wet the sleeves and
throat of her undergarments, the control of her horse had cost her much
nervous strength. The next hour dragged interminably.

But they were descending now, a steep grade to the river. Twilight,
like some gray-draped ghost of a shepherdess whom Apollo had wronged and
who still shadowed his steps, gathered swiftly about them.

Bill urged his horse to a faster walk; tired as the animal was he
responded nobly. Because Virginia's horse was likewise courageous he
kept pace, and the distance widened between the two of them and the
remainder of the pack train. Lounsbury's shrill complaints and Vosper's
shouts could not urge their tired mounts to a faster gait. The shadows
deepened in the tree aisles; the trail dimmed; the tree trunks faded in
the growing gloom.

"We won't be able to see our way at all in five minutes more," Virginia
told herself.

Yet five minutes passed, and then, and still the twilight lingered. The
simple explanation was that her eyes gradually adjusted themselves to
the soft light. And all at once the thickets divided and revealed the
river.

She didn't know why her breath suddenly caught in awe. Some way the
scene before her eyes scarcely seemed real. The thickets hid the stream
to