repeated after an interval with the same result: the silence and
obscurity remained unchanged.

"Let's get out of this," said the first speaker angrily; "house or
no house, man or woman, we're not wanted, and we'll make nothing
waltzing round here!"

"Hush!" said the second voice. "Sh-h! Listen."

The leaves of the nearest trees were trilling audibly. Then came a
sudden gust that swept the fronds of the taller ferns into their
faces, and laid the thin, lithe whips of alder over their horses'
flanks sharply. It was followed by the distant sea-like roaring of
the mountain-side.

"That's a little more like it!" said the first speaker joyfully.
"Another blow like that and we're all right. And look! there's a
lightenin' up over the trail we came by."

There was indeed a faint glow in that direction, like the first
suffusion of dawn, permitting the huge shoulder of the mountain
along whose flanks they had been journeying to be distinctly seen.
The sodden breath of the stirred forest depths was slightly tainted
with an acrid fume.

"That's the match you threw away two hours ago," said the pleasant
voice deliberately. "It's caught the dry brush in the trail round
the bend."

"Anyhow, it's given us our bearings, boys," said the first speaker,