k
among the evergreens. She glanced forward. The light was shut off by
a huge pile of windfall giant tree on tree, moss grown, with cypress
and alder shoots from the great, broad dead trunks, a pile the height
of a house. Passage round the ends of the up-rooted trunks led back
through the brushwood. Eleanor stepped to the lowest trunk and began
climbing over the pile by ascending first one trunk, then back up
another. Almost on the top, she paused. It was that same vague
rustling movement, too noiseless to be a noise, too evanescent for a
sound. She parted the screen of shrubbery growing from the prone
trunks and peered forward.

The same lanes of gold-sifted light leading over the edge of the world
through the aisled evergreens, but at the end a glint as of emerald,
the sheen of water with the metal glister of green enamel, water
marbled like onyx or malachite, with the reflection of a snow cross and
dun gray shadows--shadows of deer standing motionless at the opening of
the aisled trees--come out from the forest at sundown to their drinking
place. Lane of light? It had been a lane of delight; and that was
what all life might be but for the Satyr shadows lurking along the
trail. There were two or three little fawns, just turning from ash
coat to ochre gray, nuzzling and wasting the water; and one of the year
old deer had turned its head and was sniffing the air looking back, a
poetry of motionless motion, all senses poised. Eleanor held her
breath. If only the other two would come: yet she had put back her
hand to warn them if they should come; and stood so, looking and
listening. She remembered afterwards by the nodding of the blue bells
she had known that the wind was away from the deer to her. There was a
quick step on the lowest log. She stretched back her hand to signal
quiet. The quick noiseless step came up the logs like a stair--winged
feet. She turned to see what effect this fairy scene would have on the
little denizen of the slums.

It wasn't the frontiersman at all. It was the Ranger; and she had let
the screen of branches spring back with a snap; and the deer had leaped
in mid-air, vanishing phantoms; and her hands had met his half way; and
his eyes were shining with a light that blinded her presence of mind.
Then, he had drawn her to himself; and afterwards, when she had tried
to live it over again, she realized that she had lost count.

Shall we let the curtain drop, dear reader? For