broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills
rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from
this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of
lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and
saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of
purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's
Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in
New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up
jade-colored peaks into the electric blue--the scarred pyramid of Graytop
standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran
sentinel.

In an access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had
become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place
again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem
more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long
was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him
like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she
was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her
father's plan of handing him back to justice--and yet his mind refused to
connect the wraith of the night before with either police work or
betrayal. Her appearance had been so dim and fleeting that he could have
fancied her the dryad of a dream, had it not been for his surroundings.

He began to examine them once more, inspecting the water-colors on the
wall one by one, in search of some clew to her personality. The first
sketch was of a nun in a convent garden--the background vaguely French,
and yet with a difference. The next was of a trapper, or voyageur, pushing
a canoe into the waters of a wild northern lake. The next was a group of
wigwams with squaws and children in the foreground. Then came more nuns;