t hung upon him, and every step was to
him a mingled delight and bitterness.

"Hard work!" he said presently, with his encouraging smile; "but you'll
be paid."

The pines grew closer, and then suddenly lightened. A few more steps,
and Elizabeth gave a cry of pleasure. They were on the edge of an
alpine meadow, encircled by dense forest, and sloping down beneath their
feet to a lake that lay half in black shadow, half blazing in the
afternoon sun. Beyond was a tossed wilderness of peaks to west and
south. Light masses of cumulus cloud were rushing over the sky, and
driving waves of blue and purple colour across the mountain masses and
the forest slopes. Golden was the sinking light and the sunlit half of
the lake; golden the western faces and edges of the mountain world;
while beyond the valley, where ran the white smoke of a train, there
hung in the northern sky a dream-world of undiscovered snows, range, it
seemed, beyond range, remote, ethereal; a Valhalla of the old gods of
this vast land, where one might guess them still throned at bay,
majestic, inviolate.

But it was the flowers that held Elizabeth mute. Anderson had brought
her to a wild garden of incredible beauty. Scarlet and blue, purple and
pearl and opal, rose-pink and lavender-grey the flower-field ran about
her, as though Persephone herself had just risen from the shadow of this
nameless northern lake, and the new earth had broken into eager flame at
her feet. Painter's brush, harebell, speedwell, golden-brown
gaillardias, silvery hawkweed, columbines yellow and blue, heaths, and
lush grasses--Elizabeth sank down among them in speechless joy. Anderson
gathered handfuls of columbine and vetch, of harebell and heath, and
filled her lap with them, till she gently stopped him.

"No! Let me only look!"

And with her hands around her knees she sat motionless and still.
Anderson threw himself down beside her. Fragrance, colour, warmth; the
stir of an endless self-sufficient life; the fruitfulness and bounty of
the earth; these things wove their ancient spells about them. Every
little rush of the breeze seemed an invitation and a caress.

Presently she thanked him for having brought her there, and said
something of remembering it in England.

"As one who will never see it again?" He turned and faced her smiling.
But behind his frank, pleasant look there was something from which
she shrank.

"I shall hardly see it, again," she said hesitating. "Perhaps th