“I’m content to rank beside you; we can climb together,” said Frank Scherman.  “Even Miss Craydocke has not got to the highest, you see,” he went on, a little hurriedly.

Sin Saxon broke in as hurriedly as he, with a deeper flush still upon her face.  “There’s everything beyond.  That’s part of it.  But she helps one to feel what the higher—­the Highest—­must be.  She’s like the rock she stands on.  She’s one of the steps.”

“Come, Asenath, let’s go up.”  And he held out his hand to her till she took it and rose.  They had known each other from childhood, as I said; but Frank Scherman hardly ever called her by her name.  “Miss Saxon” was formal, and her school sobriquet he could not use.  It seemed to mean a great deal when he did say “Asenath.”

And Sin Saxon took his hand and let him lead her up, notwithstanding the “significance.”

They are young, and I am not writing a love-story; but I think they will “climb together;” and that the words that wait to be said are mere words,—­they have known and understood each other so long.

* * * * *

“I feel like a camel at a fountain, drinking in what is to last through the dry places,” said Martha Josselyn, as they came up.  “Miss Saxon, you don’t know what you have given us to-day.  I shall take home the hills in my heart.”

“We might have gone without seeing this,” said Susan.

“No, you mightn’t,” said Sin Saxon.  “It’s my good luck to see you see it, that’s all.  It couldn’t be in the order of things, you know, that you should be so near it, and want it, and not have it, somehow.”

“So much is in the order of things, though!” said Martha.  “And there are so many things we want, without knowing them even to be!”

“That’s the beauty of it, I think,” said Leslie Goldthwaite, turning back from where she stood, bright in the sunset glory, on the open rock.  Her voice was like that of some young prophet of joy, she was so full of the gladness and loveliness of the time.  “That’s the beauty of it, I think.  There is such a worldful, and you never know what you may be coming to next!”

“Well, this is our last—­of the mountains.  We go on Tuesday.”

“It isn’t your last of us, though, or of what we want of you,” rejoined Sin Saxon.  “We must have the tableaux for Monday.  We can’t do without you in Robin Gray or Consolation.  And about Tuesday,—­it’s only your own making up of minds.  You haven’t written, have you?  They don’t expect you?  When a week’s broken in upon, like a dollar, the rest is of no account.  And there’ll be sure to be something doing, so many are going the week after.”

“We shall have letters to-night,” said Susan.  “But I think we must go on Tuesday.”

Everybody had letters that night.  The mail was in early, and Captain Green came up from the post-office as the Minster party was alighting from the wagons.  He gave Dakie Thayne the bag.  It was Dakie’s delight to distribute, calling out the fortunate names as the expectant group pressed around him, like people waiting the issue of a lottery venture.