f bark, climbed the
treacherous slope as Marion did some hours later, and settled himself
in the half-shelter of the cave to await the morning. A rasher of
bacon, a slice of bread, and a pipe of tobacco refreshed him; and he
rolled himself in his blankets, and went to sleep. Like Marion in the
"spare bedroom" far below, he was awakened in the night by the savage
hammerings of the storm. The very rocks beneath him seemed to be
jarred by that cannonade; the wind, howling around the cliff,
threatened to drag him out of his cave; and the rain fell in torrents
on the platform, almost flooding his stone bed. But he turned over in
his blankets, and hoped the mountain would "keep it up" all night.
Even Sunnysides would be halted by a storm like that.

He arose at the first sign of dawn, hurried through his scant and
salty breakfast, quenched his thirst with rain water scooped out of
depressions in the rock, and started on. Knowing the trail at this
point, he rode straight out along the platform, and came in half a
minute to the spot where the wall of rock was broken down into a
clutter of debris, in width some forty feet. Up through this litter of
disintegrated granite the trail lurched with many twists and turns,
and emerged at last upon one of the lower levels of the summit.

Trixy was winded, and for a moment Haig rested her, while he surveyed
the scene. And in the thrill of that moment, facing the undertaking in
which he had once failed, he all but forgot Sunnysides. The wind was
low, and scarcely more difficult to meet than a stiff blow in the
Park; but aside from that he saw little encouraging in the prospect.
Behind him, it was true, the forests and all the hills and valleys lay
clear in the morning light, with just a thin mist clinging in the
gulches; and around him on all sides but one the sharp peaks stood up
shining white in the first rays of the sun. But in front of him gray
vapors, not yet dense enough to be described as clouds, came swirling
and tumbling toward him across the stone-littered surface of the flat.
Unless the sun should dissipate those vapors--He shrugged his
shoulders, and rode on.

Almost fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, the bald
head of Thunder Mountain, stripped as it has been of its ennobling
peak, needs only three or four hundred feet to be as high as the
snow-clad summits on each side. Seen from afar, that bare head
appears to be as flat and smooth as a table, but in realit