already up and gone. They had separated as they had come
together,--with the light-hearted irresponsibility of animals,--
without regret, and scarcely reminiscence; bearing, with cheerful
philosophy and the hopefulness of a future unfettered by their
past, the final disappointment of their quest. If they ever met
again, they would laugh and remember; if they did not, they would
forget without a sigh. He hurriedly dressed himself, and went
outside to dip his face and hands in the bucket that stood beside
the door; but the clear air, the dazzling sunshine, and the
unexpected prospect half intoxicated him.

The abandoned mill stretched beside him in all the pathos of its
premature decay. The ribs of the water-wheel appeared amid a
tangle of shrubs and driftwood, and were twined with long grasses
and straggling vines; mounds of sawdust and heaps of "brush" had
taken upon themselves a velvety moss where the trickling slime of
the vanished river lost itself in sluggish pools, discolored with
the dyes of redwood. But on the other side of the rocky ledge
dropped the whole length of the valley, alternately bathed in
sunshine or hidden in drifts of white and clinging smoke. The
upper end of the long canyon, and the crests of the ridge above
him, were lost in this fleecy cloud, which at times seemed to
overflow the summits and fall in slow leaps like lazy cataracts
down the mountain-side. Only the range before the ledge was clear;
there the green pines seemed to swell onward and upward in long
mounting billows, until at last they broke against the sky.

In the keen stimulus of the hour and the air Key felt the
mountaineer's longing for action, and scarcely noticed that
Collinson had pathetically brought out his pork barrel to scrape