The party had scattered again, after the repast, and Leslie and the Josselyns had gone back into the Minster entrance, where they never tired of standing, and out of whose gloom they looked now upon all the flood of splendor, rosy, purple, and gold, which the royal sun flung back—­his last and richest largess—­upon the heights that looked longest after him.  Mr. Wharne and Miss Craydocke climbed the cliff.  Sin Saxon, on her way up, stopped short among the broken crags below.  There was something very earnest in her gaze, as she lifted her eyes, wide and beautiful with the wonder in them, to the face of granite upreared before her, and then turned slowly to look across and up the valley, where other and yet grander mountain ramparts thrust their great forbiddance on the reaching vision.  She sat down, where she was, upon a rock.

“You are very tired?” Frank Scherman said, inquiringly.

“See how they measure themselves against each other,” Sin Saxon said, for answer.  “Look at them, Leslie and the rest, inside the Minster that arches up so many times their height above their heads,—­yet what a little bit, a mere mousehole, it is out of the cliff itself; and then look at the whole cliff against the Ledges, that, seen from anywhere else, seem to run so low along the river; and compare the Ledges with Feather-Cap, and Feather-Cap with Giant’s Cairn, and Giant’s Cairn with Washington, thirty miles away!”

“It is grand surveying,” said Frank Scherman.

“I think we see things from the little best,” rejoined Sin Saxon.  “Washington is the big end of the telescope.”

“Now you have made me look at it,” said Frank Scherman, “I don’t think I have been in any other spot that has given me such a real idea of the mountains as this.  One must have steps to climb by, even in imagination.  How impertinent we are, rushing at the tremendousness of Washington in the way we do; scaling it in little pleasure-wagons, and never taking in the thought of it at all!”

Something suddenly brought a flush to Sin Saxon’s face, and almost a quiver to her lips.  She was sitting with her hands clasped across her knees, and her head a little bent with a downward look, after that long, wondering mountain gaze, that had filled itself and then withdrawn for thought.  She lifted her face suddenly to her companion.  The impetuous look was in her eyes.  “There’s other measuring too, Frank.  What a fool I’ve been!”

Frank Scherman was silent.  It was a little awkward for him, scarcely comprehending what she meant.  He could by no means agree with Sin Saxon when she called herself a fool; yet he hardly knew what he was to contradict.

“We’re well placed at this minute.  Leslie Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne and the Josselyns half way up above there, in the Minster.  Mr. Wharne and Miss Craydocke at the top.  And I down here, where I belong.  Impertinence!  To think of the things I’ve said in my silliness to that woman, whose greatness I can no more measure!  Why didn’t somebody stop me?  I don’t answer for you, Frank, and I won’t keep you; but I think I’ll just stay where I am, and not spoil the significance!”