"So my old mountain talks to you, too? I'll think of that when I'm up
here in my hammock alone. Oh, you bet, I'll think of that hard! What
does the old mountain lady say to you, anyway? Look--when the light's
on that long precipice, you can sometimes see a snow slide come over
the edge in a puff of spray. They are worst at mid-day when the heat
sends 'em down; and they're bigger on the back of the mountain where
she shelves straight up and down--"

And her thought met his poise half way.

"What does the old mountain say? Don't you know what science says--how
the snow flakes fall to the same music of law as the snow slide, and
it's the snow flake makes the snow slide that sets the mountain free,
the gentle, quiet, beautiful snow flake that sculptures the granite--"

"The gentle, quiet--beautiful thing," slowly repeated the Ranger in a
dream. "That sounds pretty good to me."

He said no more; for he knew that the veil had lifted, and the
voiceless voices of the night were shouting riotously. The wind came
suffing through the swaying arms of the bearded waving hemlocks--Druid
priests officiating at some age-old sacrament. Then a night-hawk
swerved past with a hum of wings like the twang of a harp string.

"Look," she said, poking at the sod with her foot. "All the little
clover leaves have folded their wings to sleep."


Old Calamity passed in and out of the Range cabin. Wayland couldn't
remember how from the first they had slipped into the habit of calling