the
horse as the pitch of the ravine grew steeper; later he saw his wisdom
in keeping the chestnut fresh for the final burst, for when he reached
the head-spring of the Girard, he faced a confusion of difficult, naked
mountains. He was daunted but determined, and the next morning he filled
his canteens and struck into the last stage of his journey.

Luck gave him cool weather, with high moving clouds, which curtained the
sun during the middle of the day, but even then it was hard work. He had
not the vestige of a trail to follow; the mountain sides were bare rock.
A scattering of shrubs and dwarfed trees found rooting in crevices, but
on the whole Connor was journeying through a sea of stone, and
sometimes, when the sun glinted on smooth surface, the reflection
blinded him. By noon the chestnut was hobbling, and before nightfall
even the mule showed signs of distress. And though Connor traveled now
by compass, he was haunted by a continual fear that he might have
mistaken his way, or that the directions he had picked up at Lukin might
be entirely wrong. Evening was already coming over the mountains when he
rounded a slope of black rock and found below him a picture that tallied
in every detail with all he had heard of the valley.

The first look was like a glance into a deep well of stone with a flash
of water in the bottom; afterward he sat on a boulder and arranged the
details of that big vista. Nothing led up to the Garden from any
direction; it was a freak of nature. Some convulsion of the earth, when
these mountains were first rising, perhaps, had split the rocks, or as
the surface strata rolled up, they parted over the central lift and left
this ragged fissure. Through the valley ran a river, but water could
never have cut those saw-tooth cliffs; and Connor noted this strange
thing: that the valley came to abrupt ends both north and south. By the
slant sunlight, and at that distance--for he judged the place to be some
ten or fifteen miles in length--it seemed as if the cliff fronts to the
north and south were as solid and lofty as a portion of the sides; yet
this could not be unless the river actually disappeared under the face
of the wall. Still, he could not make out details from the distance,
only the main outline of the place, the sheen of growing things, whether
trees or grass, and the glitter of the river which swelled toward the
center of the valley into a lake. He could discover only one natural
entrance