," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one
would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."

It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her
voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the
spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under
his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.

"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better
start."

He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin
he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now
transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later
he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible
path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.

It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like
ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath
the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that
no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods
could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet.
But it was there, and she traced it--never pausing never speaking, and
only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in
sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.

They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below,
Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff
of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.

"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.

They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It
was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of
the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were
suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by
light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was
bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit
was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the
twilight.

"The steamer _Empress of Erin_," the girl said, with what seemed like
abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec
on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St.
Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she
reaches Ir