, often, a secret impulse urged him
to it. He spent days there, crouching upon the top curve of a great
half-dome from which he could look down and watch the little beings at
their lives--walking about, cooking their meals, eating them, or
following the arduous windings of the trails with sweating noses. At
night their fires twinkled red; and once, when Charles-Norton, wrapped in
the secrecy of the dark, had slowly floated the whole length of the
Valley above them, there had come to him, softened and blended by
distance, the harmony of their voices in song.

At first, he had felt but disdain for them, but gradually another feeling
had come to him, they were so slow, and crawly, and helpless--and yet so
indomitable. A vague pity, almost a respect, swelled within him as he
watched them panting, and perspiring, and toiling up the slopes, reaching
thus with untold effort heights insignificant to him, from which they
presently tumbled down again after their inevitable lunch of sandwiches.
This new interest expressed itself rudimentarily in a perverse desire to
tease them. Yielding to it one afternoon, in broad daylight he sailed the
whole length of the Valley, going slowly, resplendent in the sun. He
could see the little beings gather in groups, and see the little yellow
faces screwed up toward him; and upon the stage, gliding in from the West
like a Cinderella coach drawn by six white mice, all the passengers were
standing with milling arms. With a few strong beats, he whizzed out of
range and returned to his meadow, chuckling.

He was back again the next day, though, and the next; and of evenings he
began to hover about the Upper Inn.

The Upper Inn was a little chalet built on the edge of the Valley's
northern wall. It crouched there, small as a toy in the chaos of huge
domes surrounding it, backed up against a great granite-rooted tamarack
as if in fear of the abyss yawning at its feet. From its veranda, a
glance fell sheer, along the glacier-polished wall, to the valley floor,
three thousand feet below.

Charles-Norton, of evenings, liked to hover in the void in front of the
Inn, his head even with the veranda, his body dangling beneath, while he
looked through the glass door into the hall within.... Always a red fire
glowed there, within a large black fireplace; and about it, men and
women, in garments fresh and clean after the day's climbing, sat chatting
or reading. Among them was a young woman who interested Char