come his fear for bears, Mexicans, and getting lost,
but the too-gently reared youth had never conquered his nervousness at
thunder storms. He meant to, though, for he had come to consider useless
fears as so much surplus luggage. Just as when he was a small boy he had
overcome his fear of the dark by going right out into it and wandering
around in it till he felt at home in it, so now he meant to go right out
into the next thunder storm that came, becoming its familiar, till he
knew the worst, and no longer felt this unreasoning fear.

It was therefore with a certain satisfaction, (though coupled with an
equally certain inward shrinking), that as he scanned the skies for some
sign of the returning bi-plane, he noticed, rising above a green fringe
of silver firs across the canyon, the snowy cumulus of a cloud. This was
about an hour before meridian, the time the usual five minute daily noon
thunder storm began to gather.

But to-day he noted with surprise, not unmixed with alarm, that beyond
this one small mountain of the upper air,--so like the glacier-polished
granite slopes beneath that it might have been a fairy mountain, swelling
visibly as it rose higher and higher above the canyon wall,--beyond this
for as far as he could see were other domes and up-boiling vapor
mountains. What did it betoken? A cloud-burst?--For Sierra weather is not
like that in the Eastern mountain ranges, and such an assemblage sweeping
along the slopes and flying just above the green firs of the lower
forests must mean something beyond ordinary in the line of weather.

Had he known more of Sierra weather, he would that instant have given up
his plan of being out in this specimen, but his new-born resolution was
still strong within him, and--he did not know. One above another for as
far as he could see the pearl-tinted billows rose from among the
neighboring peaks, swelling visibly as it rose higher and higher. Then
they began floating together, the cloud canyons taking on grayer tints,
then deep purplish shadows, and their bases darkened with the weight of
their vapory waters.

With the sudden reverberation of a cannon shot, the first thunderbolt
crashed just ahead of a blinding zig-zag of lightning, and echoing and
reechoing from peak to granite peak, with ear-splitting, metallic
clearness, it rang its way down the canyon walls, till the echoes died
away. Soon the big drops began spattering loudly on the granite slopes,
till the drenche