les of the roofs
facing north. It was a poor bleak village under the granite flank of the
Mountain, and as soon as they left it they began to climb. The road was
steep and full of ruts, and the horse settled down to a walk while they
mounted and mounted, the world dropping away below them in great mottled
stretches of forest and field, and stormy dark blue distances.

Charity had often had visions of this ascent of the Mountain but she
had not known it would reveal so wide a country, and the sight of
those strange lands reaching away on every side gave her a new sense of
Harney's remoteness. She knew he must be miles and miles beyond the last
range of hills that seemed to be the outmost verge of things, and she
wondered how she had ever dreamed of going to New York to find him....

As the road mounted the country grew bleaker, and they drove across
fields of faded mountain grass bleached by long months beneath the snow.
In the hollows a few white birches trembled, or a mountain ash lit its
scarlet clusters; but only a scant growth of pines darkened the granite
ledges. The wind was blowing fiercely across the open slopes; the horse
faced it with bent head and straining flanks, and now and then the buggy
swayed so that Charity had to clutch its side.

Mr. Miles had not spoken again; he seemed to understand that she wanted
to be left alone. After a while the track they were following forked,
and he pulled up the horse, as if uncertain of the way. Liff Hyatt
craned his head around from the back, and shouted against the wind:
"Left----" and they turned into a stunted pine-wood and began to drive
down the other side of the Mountain.

A mile or two farther on they came out on a clearing where two or three
low houses lay in stony fields, crouching among the rocks as if to brace
themselves against the wind. They were hardly more than sheds, built of
logs and rough boards, with tin stove-pipes sticking out of their roofs.
The sun was setting, and dusk had already fallen on the lower world,
but a yellow glare still lay on the lonely hillside and the crouching
houses. The next moment it faded and left the landscape in dark autumn
twilight.

"Over there," Liff called out, stretching his long arm over Mr. Miles's
shoulder. The clergyman turned to the left, across a bit of bare ground
overgrown with docks and nettles, and stopped before the most ruinous of
the sheds. A stove-pipe reached its crooked arm out of one window, and
the