Page 1 (1/2)

Close to the serried backbone of the Cuh a sky of

before its descent to the

horizon The sugar-loaf cone that towered above a creek called Misery

was pointed and edged with emerald tracery where the loftiest timber

thrust up its crest pluht for more than an hour yet, but belohere the waters tossed

theht was already

thickening into a cathedral glooh course of the creek between moss-velveted and

shaded bowlders of titanic proportions The native would have

recognized the country road in these tortuous twistings Now there were

no travelers, foreign or native, and no sounds fro throats

except at intervals the clear "Bob White" of a nesting partridge, and

the silver confidence of the red cardinal flitting a the pines

Occasionally, too, a stray whisper of breeze stole along the creek-bed

and rustled the beeches, or stirred in the broad, fanlike leaves of the

"cucureat block of sandstone, to whose su in his saddle could scarcely reach his fingertips, towered

above the strea tenaciously to its

apex Loftily on both sides climbed the mountains cloaked in laurel and

tie was thrust aside froirl appeared in the opening For an instant she

halted, with her brown fingers holding back the brushwood, and raised

her face as though listening Across the slope drifted the call of the

partridge, and with perfect imitation she whistled back an answer It

would have seemed appropriate to anyone who had seen her that she

should talk bird language to the birds She was herself asThat she was beautiful was not

strange The wolory blooery have taken toll of their youth--and she could not

have been more than sixteen