aside from the trail, and stood there like a great scarlet flower
in still air. There was the way at her feet--that path that coiled
under the cliff and ran down loop by loop through majestic oak and
poplar and masses of rhododendron. She drew a long breath and
stirred uneasily--she'd better go home now--but the path had a
snake-like charm for her and still she stood, following it as far
down as she could with her eyes. Down it went, writhing this way
and that to a spur that had been swept bare by forest fires. Along
this spur it travelled straight for a while and, as her eyes
eagerly followed it to where it sank sharply into a covert of
maples, the little creature dropped of a sudden to the ground and,
like something wild, lay flat.

A human figure had filled the leafy mouth that swallowed up the
trail and it was coming towards her. With a thumping heart she
pushed slowly forward through the brush until her face, fox-like
with cunning and screened by a blueberry bush, hung just over the
edge of the cliff, and there she lay, like a crouched panther-cub,
looking down. For a moment, all that was human seemed gone from
her eyes, but, as she watched, all that was lost came back to
them, and something more. She had seen that it was a man, but she
had dropped so quickly that she did not see the big, black horse
that, unled, was following him. Now both man and horse had
stopped. The stranger had taken off his gray slouched hat and he
was wiping his face with something white. Something blue was tied
loosely about his throat. She had never seen a man like that
before. His face was smooth and looked different, as did his
throat and his hands. His breeches were tight and on his feet were
strange boots that were the colour of his saddle, which was deep
in seat, high both in front and behind and had strange long-hooded