ped now on the top of the
debris, long since concealed by a dense forest growth, as if nature had
employed her utmost arts to hide the wound. Marion could not but yield a
little to emotions of delight and wonder. On that high platform she
stood above a marvelous mountain world, below another mountain world as
marvelous. Behind her Avalanche reared sheer and sharp and white
against the sky. On either side were snow-clad peaks. At her feet
were forests in solid masses of green, now darkening in the
twilight. And beyond, far, far beyond, the Park they had left lay
bright under the sun's after-glow, with a background of range on range
of mountains in their violet haze. On the shelf was forage for the
horses; near at hand were moss and balsam for their beds; and at a
little distance a rivulet, ice-cold, had shady pools where small
trout awaited capture. And the air was like dry wine on the lips, with
a tang of resin in the nostrils; and the woods sang a song that even
Marion could not resist.

Here they pitched two tents just large enough to cover the beds of
balsam boughs and moss and blankets. In the three days they passed in
camp Marion learned many things that were to be of incalculable value
to her one day, though she never could have guessed that all this too,
like the encounter in the Forbidden Pasture, had been ordered in the
Beginning, details in the Scheme of Things. She learned surprising
secrets of makeshift cookery; she learned the Indian's lesson of a
very little fire; she learned the mountaineer's economy of matches and
like precious articles. She fished in the small pools that lay hidden
away in dark recesses of the forest, practised shooting with her
rifle, and on the third day, in the timber below the camp, with Seth
at her side, brought down her first deer.

"I told you!" cried Huntington, delighted at the progress of his
pupil.

But her heart was not in all this; it was clamoring now to be heard,
and would by no means be stilled. Each evening Marion walked apart
from the others, to stand at the edge of the lofty platform, and watch
her green and violet Elysium swallowed up in night. Each morning she
searched for it through her field glasses to assure herself that it
had not vanished in the dark. And when the last day of their outing
came, the last evening, the last night, she could scarce contain her
impatience. To-morrow they would start; and the day after--

She could not sleep that night. Every tw