he face of the man who was riding
with bared head in ecstasy of the scene above and below him; but, most
of all, she dwelt upon the gracious and candid glance of admiration
with which he greeted her and which he repeated as he disappeared
below her to be seen no more.

This look went with her to her room, and as she sat at her window,
which opened upon the river, she wondered whether he had gone into
camp in the pine groves just below the bridge, or whether he had taken
lodgings at the hotel.

She had lovers--no girl of her charm could move without meeting the
admiring glances of men; but this stranger's regard was so much more
subtly exalting--it held an impersonal quality--it went beyond her
entire understanding, adding an element of mystery to herself, to him,
and to the sunset.

III

THE MAN

Meanwhile the young tourist had alighted before the door of the
principal hotel, and, after writing his name in a clear and precise
hand on the book in the office, had hastened to his supper, carrying a
most vivid recollection of the slender figure and flushed and speaking
face of the girl on the trail. That moment of meeting, accidental and
fleeting, had already become a most beautiful climax of his
pilgrimage. "She was born of the sunset; she does not really exist,"
he said, with unwonted warmth of phrase. "How could this little mining
town produce so exquisite a flower?"

His grosser needs supplied, he lit his big student's pipe and went out
upon the upper story of the hotel's rude porch, and there sat,
listening to the rush of the stream, while the great yellow stars
appeared one by one above the lofty peaks, and the air grew crisp to
frostiness. He was profoundly at peace with the world and himself, his
physical weariness being just sufficient to give this hour a sound
completeness of content.

As the beauty of the night deepened, the girl's beauty allured like
the moon. He still sought to explain her. "She is some traveller like
myself," he said, "Bret Harte to the contrary, notwithstanding, the
wilderness does not produce maids of her evident refinement and grace.
She comes of a long line of well-bred people."

He was not an emotional person, and had not been permitted to consider
pleasure the chief object, even of a vacation, but he went to his bed
that night well pleased with Colorow, and with a half-defined sense
that this was, after all, the point towards which his long journey,
with all its windi