Often, in the evening, the two men, with Czar, went to spend an hour in friendly intercourse with their neighbors up the canyon.  Always, they were welcomed by Myra Willard with a quiet dignity; while Sibyl was frankly delighted to have them come.  Always, they were invited with genuine hospitality to “come again.”  Frequently, Brian Oakley and perhaps Mrs. Oakley would be there when they arrived; or the Ranger would come riding into the yard before they left.  At times, the canyon’s mountain wall echoed the laughter of the little company as Sibyl and the novelist played their fantastical game of words; or again, the older people would listen to the blending voices of the artist and the girl as, in the quiet hush of the evening, they sang together to Myra Willard’s accompaniment on the violin; or, perhaps, Sibyl, with her face upturned to the mountain tops, would make for her chosen friends the music of the hills.

Not infrequently, too, the girl would call at the camp in the sycamore grove—­sometimes riding with the Ranger, sometimes alone; or they would hear her merry hail from the gate the other side of the orchard as she passed by.  And sometimes, in the morning, she would appear—­equipped with rod or gun or basket—­to frankly challenge Aaron King to some long ramble in the hills.

So the days for the young man at the beginning of his life work, and for the young woman at the beginning of her womanhood, passed.  Up and down the canyon, along the boulder-strewn bed of the roaring Clear Creek, from the Ranger Station to the falls; in the quiet glades under the alders hung with virgin’s-bower and wild grape; beneath the live-oaks on the mountains’ flanks or shoulders; in dimly lighted, cedar-sheltered gulches, among tall brakes and lilies; or high up on the canyon walls under the dark and fragrant pines—­over all the paths and trails familiar to her girlhood she led him—­showing him every nook and glade and glen—­teaching him to know, as he had asked, the mountains that she herself so loved.

The time came, at last, when the two men must return to Fairlands.  With Mr. and Mrs. Oakley they were spending the evening at Sibyl’s home when Conrad Lagrange announced that they would leave the mountains, two days later.

“Then,”—­said the girl, impulsively,—­“Mr. King and I are going for one last good-by climb to-morrow.  Aren’t we?” she concluded—­turning to the artist.

Aaron King laughed as he answered, “We certainly seem to be headed that way.  Where are we going?”

“We will start early and come back late”—­she returned—­“which really is all that any one ought to know about a climb that is just for the climb.  And listen—­no rod, no gun, no sketch-book.  I’ll fix a lunch.”

“Watch out for my convict,” warned the Ranger.  “He must be getting mighty hungry, by now.”