grave. His prayer recurred to his mind. "Well, God," he said,
looking up at the cloudless sky, "I guess you're doing it!" After
this expression of faith, he turned about and set forth to traverse
the mountain range. Passing the ridge which he already looked upon
as home, he crossed other ridges of varying height, and at the end
of a mile reached the southern limit of the mountain. Like the
northern side the southern elevation was nearly four hundred feet,
as if the granite sea had dashed upward in fiercest waves, in a last
futile attempt to inundate the plain. The southern wall was
precipitous, and Willock, looking down the cedar-studded declivity,
could gaze directly on the verdant levels that came to the very
foot.

He stood at the center of an enormous horseshoe formed on the
southwest by the range curving farther toward the south, and on his
left hand, by the same range sweeping in a quarter-circle toward the
southeast. The mouth of this granite half-circle was opened to the
south, at least a quarter-mile in width; but on his left, a jutting
spur almost at right angles to the main range, and some hundreds of
yards closer to his position, shot across the space within the
horseshoe bend, in such fashion that an observer, standing on the
plain, would have half his view of the inner concave expanse shut
off, except that part of the high north wall that towered above the
spur.

Nor was this all. Behind the perpendicular arm, or spur, that ran
out into the sea of mesquit, rose a low hill that was itself in the
nature of an inner spur although, since it failed to reach the
mountain, it might he regarded as a long flat island, surrounded by
the calm green tide. This innermost arm, or island, was so near the