d a certain rather crude
philosophy out of the ruins that had tumbled about her ears. It was
so crude, so unformed in her mind that it can hardly be set down. To
justify one's own existence. That was all that life held or meant. But
that included all the lives that touched on yours. It had nothing to
do with success, as she had counted success heretofore. It was service,
really. It was living as--well, as Molly Brandeis had lived, helpfully,
self-effacingly, magnificently. Fanny gave up trying to form the thing
that was growing in her mind. Perhaps, after all, it was too soon to
expect a complete understanding of that which had worked this change in
her from that afternoon in Fenger's library.

After the first few days she found less and less difficulty in climbing.
Her astonished heart and lungs ceased to object so strenuously to the
unaccustomed work. The Cabin Rock trail, for example, whose summit found
her panting and exhausted at first, now seemed a mere stroll. She grew
more daring and ambitious. One day she climbed the Long's Peak trail to
timberline, and had tea at Timberline Cabin with Albert Edward Cobbins.
Albert Edward Cobbins, Englishman, erstwhile sailor, adventurer and
gentleman, was the keeper of Timberline Cabin, and the loneliest man in
the Rockies. It was his duty to house overnight climbers bound for the
Peak, sunrise parties and sunset parties, all too few now in the chill
October season-end. Fanny was his first visitor in three days. He was
pathetically glad to see her.

"I'll have tea for you," he said, "in a jiffy. And I baked a pan of
French rolls ten minutes ago. I had a feeling."

A magnificent specimen of a man, over six feet tall slim,
broad-shouldered, long-headed, and scrubbed-looking as only an
Englishman can be, there was something almost pathetic in the sight of
him bustling about the rickety little kitchen stove.

"To-morrow," said Fanny, over her tea, "I'm going to get an early start,
reach here by noon, and go on to Boulder Field and maybe Keyhole."

"Better not, Miss. Not in October, when there's likely to be a snowstorm
up there in a minute's notice."

"You'd come and find me, wouldn't you? They always do, in the books."

"Books are all very well, Miss. But I'm not a mountain man. The truth
is I don't know my way fifty feet from this cabin. I got the job because
I'm used to loneliness, and don't mind it, and because I can cook, d'you
see, having shipped as cook for years. Bu