here seemed no other land on earth but
that on mountain sides and backs and shoulders and crowns. And also
one felt the absurdity of living upon flat ground, where life must be
an insignificant thing.

There were only a few sight-seers in the small carriages, and they were
going to look at the view from the summit. They were not in search of
a ledge.

The Rat and Marco were. When the little train stopped at the top, they
got out with the rest. They wandered about with them over the short
grass on the treeless summit and looked out from this viewpoint and the
other. The Rat grew more and more silent, and his silence was not
merely a matter of speechlessness but of expression. He LOOKED silent
and as if he were no longer aware of the earth. They left the
sight-seers at last and wandered away by themselves. They found a
ledge where they could sit or lie and where even the world of mountains
seemed below them. They had brought some simple food with them, and
they laid it behind a jutting bit of rock. When the sight-seers
boarded the laboring little train again and were dragged back down the
mountain, their night of vigil would begin.

That was what it was to be. A night of stillness on the heights, where
they could wait and watch and hold themselves ready to hear any thought
which spoke to them.

The Rat was so thrilled that he would not have been surprised if he had
heard a voice from the place of the stars. But Marco only believed
that in this great stillness and beauty, if he held his boy-soul quiet
enough, he should find himself at last thinking of something that would
lead him to the place which held what it was best that he should find.
The people returned to the train and it set out upon its way down the
steepness.

They heard it laboring on its way, as though it was forced to make as
much effort to hold itself back as it had made to drag itself upward.

Then they were alone, and it was a loneness such as an eagle might feel
when it held itself poised high in the curve of blue. And they sat and
watched. They saw the sun go down and, shade by shade, deepen and make
radiant and then draw away with it the last touches of
color--rose-gold, rose-purple, and rose-gray.

One mountain-top after another held its blush a few moments and lost
it. It took long to gather them all but at length they were gone and
the marvel of night fell.

The breath of the forests below was sweet about them, and soundlessne