A PHYLLIS OF THE SIERRAS


By Bret Harte




CHAPTER I.


Where the great highway of the Sierras nears the summit, and the pines
begin to show sterile reaches of rock and waste in their drawn-up files,
there are signs of occasional departures from the main road, as if the
weary traveller had at times succumbed to the long ascent, and turned
aside for rest and breath again. The tired eyes of many a dusty
passenger on the old overland coach have gazed wistfully on those sylvan
openings, and imagined recesses of primeval shade and virgin wilderness
in their dim perspectives. Had he descended, however, and followed one
of these diverging paths, he would have come upon some rude wagon track,
or "logslide," leading from a clearing on the slope, or the ominous
saw-mill, half hidden in the forest it was slowly decimating. The
woodland hush might have been broken by the sound of water passing over
some unseen dam in the hollow, or the hiss of escaping steam and throb
of an invisible engine in the covert.

Such, at least, was the experience of a young fellow of five-and-twenty,
who, knapsack on back and stick in hand, had turned aside from the
highway and entered the woods one pleasant afternoon in July. But he
was evidently a deliberate pedestrian, and not a recent deposit of