jutted out. The sheriff seemed to feel nothing more than a mild surprise
and curiosity. And the three went silently, side by side, under the
spruce. They were glorious trees, strong of trunk and nobly proportioned.
Their tops were silver-bright in the sunshine. Through the lower branches
the light was filtered through layer after layer of shadow, until on the
ground there were only a few patches of light here and there, and these
were no brighter than silver moonshine, and seemed to be without heat.
Indeed, in the mild shadow among the trees lay the chill of the mountain
air which seems to lurk in covert places waiting for the night.

It might have been this chill that made Terry button his coat closer
about him and tremble a little as he entered the shadow. The great trunks
shut out the world in a scattered wall. There was a narrow opening here
among the trees at the very center. The three were in a sort of gorge of
which the solemn spruce trees furnished the sides, the cold blue of the
mountain skies was just above the lofty tree-tips, and the wind kept the
pure fragrance of the evergreens stirring about them. The odor is the
soul of the mountains. A great surety had come to Terry that this was the
last place he would ever see on earth. He was about to die, and he was
glad, in a dim sort of way, that he should die in a place so beautiful.
He looked at the sheriff, who stood calm but puzzled, and at Gainor, who
was very grave, indeed, and returned his look with one of infinite pity,
as though he knew and understood and acquiesced, but was deeply grieved
that it must be so.

"Gentlemen," said Terry, making his voice light and cheerful as he felt
that the voice of a Colby should be at such a time, being about to die,
"I suppose you understand why I have asked you to come here?"

"Yes," nodded Gainor.