of men and animals. Hence the voices in the following colloquy seemed
the more grotesque and incongruous from being the apparent expression
of an upright monolith, ten feet high, on the right, and another mass of
granite, that, reclining, peeped over the verge.

"Hello!"

"Hello yourself!"

"You're late."

"I lost the trail, and climbed up the slide."

Here followed a stumble, the clatter of stones down the mountain-side,
and an oath so very human and undignified that it at once relieved the
bowlders of any complicity of expression. The voices, too, were close
together now, and unexpectedly in quite another locality.

"Anything up?"

"Looey Napoleon's declared war agin Germany."

"Sho-o-o!"

Notwithstanding this exclamation, the interest of the latter speaker was
evidently only polite and perfunctory. What, indeed, were the political
convulsions of the Old World to the dwellers on this serene, isolated
eminence of the New?

"I reckon it's so," continued the first voice. "French Pete and that