tating
with his gaze on Eleanor. "There's the one across to the Upper Mesas;
an' there's one back behind over th' shoulder of the Holy Cross down to
the Lake Behind the Peak; an' there ought to be one between, runnin' up
to the snows! Think y'r good for climbin' over this windfall while A
carry this little puss on m' shoulder? Steer for the snow ahead!
Don't mind my laggin' back! Go on ahead an' wait for us! A'm goin' t'
see if A can't mine down to some gold beneath th' slime o' th' slums!
It's not in the course o' nature that any child should be blind t' this
world, Miss Eleanor, if A can open th' doors for her! Go ahead; an' if
y' find a good sittin' down place, just rest quiet an' wait for us an'
don't worry if we're long comin'! If A can't make her love God's big
play ground, A'm no preacher!"

Eleanor laughed. Her last mining down to veins of gold had not been a
particular success. She looked back at the two; the massive thewed
frontiersman with the shock of white hair and ruddy cheeks and almost
boyish eyes; the little tawdry bundle of rags on his shoulder, with the
black hollow eyes full of nameless fear and nameless knowledge, and the
little old hard mouth with a dreadful tense sadness about the droop.
She heard the big genial voice with the roll of Scotch-Canadian
drawling out its r's, and the child's thin "Yes, Sor, m' Faather;" then
the child burst into a joyous laugh. Eleanor wondered what he could
have said to elicit that laugh. When she glanced back, the old
frontiersman had Lizzie standing on his outstretched hand holding to a
branch overhead peering in a deserted hawk's nest. Even as Eleanor
looked, the little future acrobat went scrabbling up into the tree with
another joyous laugh.

Then, with that spirit of the child, which possesses us all when we
give ourselves to the genii of the woods, Eleanor was following the
long lanes of light between the giant spruces--the long lanes of light
that lead on and on and on, ahead of you; out over the edge of the
world into the realms of dreams and holiday and joy, where there is no
Greed, and there is no Lust, and there is no nagging Care, and there is
no Motiveless Malice spoiling things. She looked up. The gray green
moss hung festooned from branch to branch; and the light sifted down a
tempered rain of gold; and all the shiny evergreens shook gypsy
castanets of joy to the riffling wind. She listened. The voices
behind had faded away; and th