you worry, Calamity! We're going to get his scalp!"

He paced the Ridge half the night planning his campaign. He would go
first thing in the morning and get that child's story of the mine and
the "dummy" entryman. Then, he would get that Swede's affidavit before
the thick-tow-head realized what he was after. Then, he would get a
trained geologist for the examination of the mine, not that flannelled
kindergartner, stuck full of bureaucratic self importance as he was of
ignorance. Then, he would surprise them by doing absolutely nothing
till election time, then "plunk" it all on them through the opposition
paper, and stand back, and take his dismissal! Oh, his midnight
thoughts raced, as yours and mine have raced, when we have been struck
by sorrow, or blackmail, or motiveless malice! He could not make sure
of it; but once as he paced near the Ridge trail he thought he
saw . . . was it a form in flannels accompanied by a figure resembling
Bat's sauntering slowly down to the Valley?

When Wayland dwelt a moment on what such a conjunction of observers
might mean, his thoughts jumped. Could Brydges have done it? Back in
the Cabin, the face in the picture seemed sentient and shining in the
gloom. It was an absurd notion, of course; for the picture was a
shadowy thing in dark sepia; and there was no light but the silver
reflection of the moon from the Holy Cross. The Holy Cross,--what was
it she had said? Nothing worth while ever won without someone being
crucified? How absurdly small, how remotely contemptibly impossible,
the scandal thing seemed anyway, as though a skunk could obstruct the
avalanche of the massed snow flakes by sending up his malodorous stench
across the path of the Law! And he loved her and he had her love, and
he had known the highest blessedness of life, and nothing could take
the consciousness of it from him! Wayland went to sleep dreaming
fool-things about the face in the picture. Of course, you never
dreamed them, sleeping or waking. At break of day, he picked a sprig
of mountain flower, and did certain things to that framed picture, and
rode away to his day's work.

"Let's go up and see that little runt of an Irish lassie," Matthews had
suggested in the afternoon; and they were leisurely climbing the Ridge
Trail, the old frontiersman yarning and yarning of the dear good old
days; Eleanor thinking her own thoughts. They met a downy-lipped youth
in gray flannels and Mr. Bat Brydge