reen moss, flanked right and left with two mountain peaks and
roofed over with an expanse of brilliant summer sky. Before them the
plateau stretched a mile or more, wind-swept, sun-drenched, with an
indescribable bold look of great altitude; but close to them at one
side ran a parapet-like line of tumbled rock and beyond this a sheer
descent. The eye leaped down abrupt slopes of forest to the valley
they had left, now a thousand feet below them, jewel-like with mystic
blues and greens, tremulous with heat. On the noble height where they
stood, the wind blew cool from the sea of mist-blue peaks beyond the
valley.

Sylvia was greatly moved. "Oh, what a wonderful spot!" she said under
her breath. "I never dreamed that anything could be--" She burst out
suddenly, scarcely knowing what she said, "Oh, I wish my _mother_
could be here!" She had not thought of her mother for days, and now
hardly knew that she had spoken her name. Standing there, poised above
the dark richness of the valley, her heart responding to those vast
airy spaces by an upward-soaring sweep, the quick tears of ecstasy
were in her eyes. She had entirely forgotten herself and her
companion. He did not speak. His eyes were on her face.

She moved to the parapet of rock and leaned against it. The action
brought her to herself and she flashed around on Page a grateful
smile. "It's a very beautiful spot you've brought me to," she said.

He came up beside her now. "It's a favorite of mine," he said quietly.
"If I come straight through the woods it's not more than a mile from
my farm. I come up here for the sunsets sometimes--or for dawn."

Sylvia found the idea almost too much for her. "_Oh!_" she
cried--"dawn here!"

"Yes," said the man, smiling faintly. "It's all of that!"

In her life of plains and prairies Sylvia had never been upon a great
height, had never looked down and away upon such reaches of far
valley, such glorious masses of sunlit mountain; and beyond them,
giving wings to the imagination, were mountains, more mountains,
distant, incalculably distant, with unseen hollow valleys between; and
finally, mountains again, half cloud, melting indistinguishably into
the vaporous haze of the sky. Above her, sheer and vast, lay Hemlock
Mountain, all its huge bulk a sleeping, passionless calm. Beyond was
the solemnity of Windward Mountain's concave shell, full to the
brim with brooding blue shadows, a well of mystery in that day of
wind-blown sunshine