After a vain hunt, I gave up Beast and turned to Beauty.  I looked about me, seeing much.

Foremost I saw a fellow-man, my comrade, fondled by breeze and brightness, and whispered to by all sweet sounds.  I saw Iglesias below me, on the slope, sketching.  He was preserving the scene at its bel momento.  I repented more bitterly of my momentary falseness to Beauty while I saw him so constant.

Furthermore, I saw a landscape of vigorous simplicity, easy to comprehend.  By mellow sunset the grass slope of the old farm seemed no longer tanned and rusty, but ripened.  The oval lake was blue and calm, and that is already much to say; shadows of the western hills were growing over it, but flight after flight of illumined cloud soared above, to console the sky and the water for the coming of night.  Northward, a forest darkled, whose glades of brightness I could not see.  Eastward, the bank mounted abruptly to a bare fire-swept table-land, whereon a few dead trees stood, parched and ghostly skeletons draped with rags of moss.

Furthermost and topmost, I saw Katahdin twenty miles away, a giant undwarfed by any rival.  The remainder landscape was only minor and judiciously accessory.  The hills were low before it, the lake lowly, and upright above lake and hill lifted the mountain pyramid.  Isolate greatness tells.  There were no underling mounts about this mountain-in-chief.  And now on its shoulders and crest sunset shone, glowing.  Warm violet followed the glow, soothing away the harshness of granite lines.  Luminous violet dwelt upon the peak, while below the clinging forests were purple in sheltered gorges, where they could climb nearer the summit, loved of light, and lower down gloomed green and sombre in the shadow.

Meanwhile, as I looked, the quivering violet rose higher and higher, and at last floated away like a disengaged flame.  A smouldering blue dwelt upon the peak.  Ashy-gray overcame the blue.  As dusk thickened and stars trembled into sight, the gray grew luminous.  Katahdin’s mighty presence seemed to absorb such dreamy glimmers as float in limpid night-airs:  a faint glory, a twilight of its own, clothed it.  King of the daylit-world, it became queen of the dimmer realms of night, and like a woman-queen it did not disdain to stoop and study its loveliness in the polished lake, and stooping thus it overhung the earth, a shadowy creature of gleam and gloom, an eternized cloud.

I sat staring and straying in sweet reverie, until the scene before me was dim as metaphysics.  Suddenly a flame flashed up in the void.  It grew and steadied, and dark objects became visible about it.  In the loneliness—­for Iglesias had disappeared—­I allowed myself a moment’s luxury of superstition.  Were these the Cyclops of Katahdin?  Possibly.  Were they Trolls forging diabolic enginery, or Gypsies of Yankeedom?  I will see,—­and went tumbling down the hill-side.

As I entered the circle about the cooking-fire of drift-wood by the lake, Iglesias said,—­