ad been a sudden frost following rain that had frozen
the water in the cracks of the cliffs, and made the way not only
slippery, but dangerous; for in the heat of the noon sun the ice was
melting, and every now and then its expansion was rending some
fragment of rock so that your footing might vanish from beneath, or
some shower of stones come rattling down from above; and I was tired
when I reached the Raynier place, led by a blaze of maple boughs that
started out like torches to show the way, and stopped to rest. I
looked up at an enormous shelf of rock, half clad with reddened vines
that fluttered like pestilence flags--a shelf that, although some
hundred feet or so away from it, yet overhung the place and cast a
perpetual shadow there. I wondered then why Nature had no secret
springs of feeling to thrill her and cause her to rend the rocks and
cover such a den of iniquity as we all held the spot to be. But Nature
was just as fair that ambrosial September day as if there was not a
dissonance. Perhaps she knew the right of the Rayniers to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A delicious scent of the balsam
from the pines filled the air, the sunshine swept over the hills below
in waves of light, and the hills themselves were like waves of a
golden green and purple sea where now and then a rainbow swam and
broke. Peace and perfectness, I said, peace and perfectness. These
people live and are happy. On the other side one looked into the
dreary defile of the mountain gate, with its black depths hung with
cloud, and remembered that if there was not a hell, there ought to be.
I was thinking this as I sat there, when I heard a wild cry, an
agonized shriek, blood-curdling, repeated and repeated from within.
It was the girl's voice. I was on my feet, and, in spite of the
bloodhounds, making for the spot and among the crew. The old woman
cowered in the corner, the two brothers held the girl, the old man
towered over her, his great eyes blazing in his ashen face. I can't
tell you what they were doing. Sometimes I have thought old Raynier
was burning her with a hot iron he held--"

"Oh, horrible! horrible!"

"Burning her with a hot iron to make her give up her lover! Sometimes
I have thought he was only demolishing the little likenesses of him
and of herself, which that lover had painted, and which she cherished,
perhaps as his work, perhaps for the unwonted gewgaw of the slender
golden frame, for the one picture was al