, and stared upon him, their jaws dripping with
dew. Bulls roared from the obscure deeps. Dead trees, with stark and
sinister arms, menaced warningly. All was as unreal as the world of pain's
delirium, and yet was as beautiful as the poet's vision; and the ranger,
feeling that he was looking upon one of Nature's rarest displays, removed
his hat in worship of it, thrilling with pride and satisfaction over the
thought that this was his domain, his to guard and preserve.

The crowning glow of mystery and grace came as he led his horse out upon a
projecting point of rocky ledge to rest. Here the cliff descended abruptly
to an enormous depth, and upon the vaporous rolling flood beneath him a
dome of darker shadow rested. At the summit of this shadow an aureole of
rainbow light, a complete and glorious circle rested, in the midst of
which his own image was flung, grotesque and gigantic.

"The Shadows of the Brocken!" he exclaimed, in ecstasy, all his
bitterness, his care, forgotten. "Now I understand Goethe's lines." In all
his life in the hills he had never before witnessed such a combination of
peak and sun and cloud and shadow.

His love for the range came back upon him with such power that tears
misted his eyes and his throat ached. "Where else will I find such scenes
as this?" he asked himself. "Where in all the lowlands could such
splendors shine? How can I leave this high world in which these wonders
come and go? I will not! Here will I bring my bride and build my home.
This is my world."

But the mist grew gray, the aureole of fire faded, the sun went down
behind the hills, and the chill of evening deepened on the trail, and as
he reapproached the scene of man's inhumanity to man the thought of
camping there beside those charred limbs called for heroic resolution. He
was hungry, too, and as the air pinched, he shivered.

"At the best, the sheriff cannot reach here before midnight," he said, and
settled down to his unsought, revolting vigil.

His one relief lay in the mental composition of a long letter to Lee
Virginia, whose life at that moment was a comfort to him. "If such purity,
such sweetness, can come from violence and vulgarity, then surely a new
and splendid State can rise even out of the ashes of these murdered men.
Perhaps this is the end of the old," he mused, "perhaps this is the
beginning of the new," and as he pondered the last faint crimson died out
of the west. "So must the hate and violence die o