ad the
effect of a bristling mane.

"That is Weatherbee's landmark," said Tisdale. "He called it Cerberus. It
is all sketched in true as life on his plans. The gap there under the
brute's paw is the entrance to his vale."

As they approached, the mountain seemed to move; it took the appearance of
an animal, ready to spring. Miss Armitage, watching, shivered. The
dreadful expectation she had shown the previous night when the cry of the
cougar came down the wind, rose in her face. It was as though she had come
upon that beast, more terrifying than she had feared, lying in wait for
her. Then the moment passed. She raised her head, her hands tightened on
the reins, and she drove resolutely into the shadows of the awful front.
"Now," she said, not quite steadily, "now I know how monstrously alive a
mountain can seem."

Tisdale looked at her. "You never could live in Alaska," he said. "You
feel too much this personality of inanimate things. That was David
Weatherbee's trouble. You know how in the end he thought those Alaska
peaks were moving. They got to 'crowding' him."

The girl turned a little and met his look. Her eyes, wide with dread,
entreated him. "Yes, I know," she said, and her voice was almost a
whisper. "I was thinking of him. But please don't say any more. I can't--
bear it--here."

So she was thinking of Weatherbee. Her emotion sprang from her sympathy
for him. A gentleness that was almost tenderness crept over Tisdale's
face. How fine she was, how sensitively made, and how measureless her
capacity for loving, if she could feel like this for a man of whom she had
only heard.

Miss Armitage, squaring her shoulders and sitting very erect once more,
her lips closed in a straight red line drove firmly on. A stream ran
musically along the road side,--a stream so small it was marvelous it had
a voice. As they rounded the mountain, the gap widened into the mouth of
the vale, which lifted back to an upper bench, over-topped by a lofty
plateau. Then she swung the team around and stopped. The way was cut off
by a barbed wire fence.

The enclosure was apparently a corral for a flock of Angora goats. There
was no gate for the passage of teams; the road ended there, and a rough
sign nailed to a hingeless wicket warned the wayfarer to "Keep Out." On a
rocky knob near this entrance a gaunt, hard-featured woman sat knitting.
She measured the trespassers with a furtive, smouldering glance and
clicked her needles with un