"Well, a glorious trip to you, Tom, old man!"

"And a bully summer to you!" said Tom, gripping his hand. Then, looking out of the window, "This is the last night we sleep here together, hey, Charley?"

A month later Tom sat smoking a pipe before his camp, where he often spent hours in gazing across the stupendous valley. Though he delighted in painting the smaller pictures that he found in his daily walks and climbs, he only studied this.

The ground before him dropped away so suddenly, down, down, for thousands of feet, that he was unconscious of its support. Down in the valley, where it made him dizzy to look at them, the green treetops caught all variations of light and shade from the afternoon sun. Above them, to the east, the blue glacier swept up through its jagged ravine; directly opposite, the cliffs of Mount Asibilone, all wrinkled with horizontal lines, buttressed up the glistening snow-fields; and topping these, the peak lifted its point so high that Tom had to tilt his head back to see it, poised all alone against the sky.

While he looked at its weather-worn ridges and gullies, thrust out in relief by the sharp shadows, he heard a rifle-shot down the mountain. Five minutes later his guide came toiling up among the rocks. "Missed, did you, Alf?" asked Tom.

The guide nodded gravely and set to work building the fire. His Indian blood made him naturally silent, but he was even more glum than usual to-night.

"This ain't a good place to stay, Mr. Tom," he said abruptly, as they were eating supper.

"What's that? The game too hard to hit?"

The guide's dark, high-boned face did not move a muscle.

"This ain't a good place," he repeated slowly.

"Why not?"

"Down in the woods is better."

"You haven't any eye for scenery, Alf. I wouldn't leave this place

for all the woods in America. Did you ever see another view like that?"

Alf took another gulp of coffee.

"This place is the greatest thing I ever found yet," Tom went on. "You camp in the woods, and you're hemmed in by trees all around. But I can sit right here by my camp and let the most tremendous view in the whole world soak into me. There's nothing here to hinder one's imagination; everything is too enormous to comprehend. When I look at that peak over there, I feel things that I never could feel back in the everyday world."

He was staring at it now, with the look in his eye that made the guide scowl.

"Come away to-morrow, Mr. Tom?" he demanded.

"No, you fool, why should I?"

"I'm going."

"What's that!" said Tom, looking up, "you're going?"
"Yes."

"What for?"

Alf only looked stolid.

"Some fool superstition!" Tom thought. "Well," he said carelessly, "go ahead! Do you want your pay now?"

The guide had never been cheerful company, and when he was gone Tom felt a certain satisfaction in knowing there was not a sign of humanity within a day's journey of his own little fir-roofed camp.

He had no trouble in doing his own fishing and hunting, for brooks were full, and goats and mountain sheep were plentiful. Whenever he found an unusually fine crag or woodland pool, he came back to it at his leisure to make a painting. And while he revelled in wild scenery every day, as a poet might revel in a tragic opera, he grew familiar with all the ravines and ridges in the forest below and with every chimney and snow field on the peak above.

Such daily sights as the sea of mountain tops tossed up against the horizon, followed by the phenomenon of night, which he watched over his crackling fire, took strong hold on his impressionable imagination.

He tried to comprehend the forces that had worked through all ages to raise mountains and wear away ravines and valleys. He was awed by the omnipresent power of gravitation, which gave stability to mountains and trees, yet was not so overwhelming as to pull down the eagle or to crush the man. And the pine trees' instinctive ability to grasp the rocks with well-directed roots, and to put out branches, and needles, and cones, all in their proper places and shapes, amazed him, the more he saw and thought.

Not only at camp, but many a time in the heat of a climb or hunt, he let his speculations carry him far and away out of himself. Day by day, by frequent indulgence, they took the most prominent place in his mind. Meanwhile the loves and hates of the everyday, populous world grew remote and vague; and their place was filled by a lively, almost human, interest in the inanimate things that touched him

nearest.

The peak across the valley was foremost in his mind as a giant that watched him implacably. Sometimes when he woke up at night he would peep out of his shelter to see if it were still there-yes, there it was, all white and black in the cold moonlight, with its same terrific outline against the sky.

When he was climbing the face of a cliff, clinging to cracks with hooked fingers, he cursed the rotten rocks that gave way under his feet and went bouncing and splitting down into space, where he did not dare to look. Like the jutting points that took malicious pleasure in dodging the cast of his rope, when he needed their support, they were all treacherous friends.

If he barely escaped falling into a crevasse on a high ice-field, and saw a ragged gap suddenly open in the snow a step ahead of him, he peered with a sort of tantalizing exultation into the chasm, from which icy air and the deep, hollow tinkle of dripping water came out to him. And when he reached home, he coaxed his camp fire into flame, and talked to it sociably about his day's work.

He worked on his painting now only from an habitual longing to record the striking things he saw. He did it with no idea of improv

ing his skill, or of showing his work to any one. He had left his old interests behind, just as a balloonist turns his back on the towns flattened out on the earth beneath, to look at the wonderland of colored clouds that are beginning to envelop him. And Tom had no definite notion of coming down to earth again. He vaguely intended to shake himself loose from his dreams and come back to civilization—some time; but he felt no impulse to do it now.

One day he came back from a long caribou hunt to see the smoke of a camp fire rising out of the woods below. He felt a sudden repulsion and muttered to himself as he sat on a rock and cleaned his rifle. There must be a man-probably two-who would meet him or come up to his camp. They would ask why he was staying there all alone, and how he spent his time, and would want him to talk about all the things he had nearly forgotten. He shrank from the idea of contact. He was used to being alone-he wanted to be alone and have a chance to wonder what caused the combination of orange and blue and gold in the sunset.

Next morning he watched the puff of smoke that sprawled in the damp valley till it thinned and vanished. A couple of hours later he spied the strangers themselves, two of them, loaded with packs and guns, toiling up above the timber line on a snow-covered spur of his own mountain. They crawled an inch an hour among the rocks, stopping often to rest; and by their zigzag, up-and-down course, Tom saw that they were inexperienced climbers. Finally they halted at the foot of a cliff, where they pitched a miniature tent.

"Fools!" Tom exclaimed to himself.

His guide had warned him about that cliff in the first place. And on a rainy night Tom had heard it roar, and the next morning seen a black fan-shaped opening in the snow-field above, and on the pile of débris at its foot a fresh mass of snow and rock. Such a slide occurred often during the summer,- -a hot sun was sometimes enough to start it. But between times, the tell-tale snow at the foot melted away. By the clouds on the peak across the valley, Tom saw that a storm was coming.

"Let 'em get it!" he argued querulously. "It's their own look-out. What business is it of mine if they camp there? They're free moral agents, aren't they? And to-morrow I'll be alone again. What right have they to crowd in on me that way? To-morrow morning—"

Just then his rifle, which he was brandishing by the barrel, struck a rock and was dashed out of his hand. His arm tingled up to the elbow.

"I'm crazy!" he whispered slowly, looking at the shattered stock, "raving crazy! I wasn't talking right. If I were what I used to be, I'd go-but I can't go an' tell 'em. If I once got with 'em, I'd be afraid to come back here all alone. I'd go along with them, back to railroads, an' crowds, and everything that's superficial. And this is where I'm going to be! I say, let 'em get buried if they don't know any better!"

He paused, as four or five big raindrops that slapped on the rocks distracted his attention,

"Let 'em get buried?" he repeated, questioningly.

The storm was sweeping across the valley like a gray wall. When it struck a clump of maples, Tom could see the tree-tops sway and change color. He also saw the steep snow-field above the cliff, at whose foot a tiny white square of tent canvas spotted the rocks.

"Look here!" he said sharply to himself, "what would Mildred think of you! You haven't forgotten Mildred, have you? What would she say to a fellow who never raised a finger in a case of life and death! Steady now, old man! You're going to get those fellows out of the way of the slide. And what's more, you're going to stay with 'em, do you understand? You're never coming back here,-you've let this run too blamed far already. Great Scott! what would she say!" He started off impetuously. The wind poured torrents of rain. in his face, shutting the cliff out of sight. He could see nothing but rocks. But every group of rocks was familiar; and since he had a couple of miles to go, round the edge of the ravine, he stepped along energetically. Gusts of wind pushed against his whole weight, then