The temperature fell perceptibly as they climbed the heights, and the air had the heady quality of wine.  It was awesome, this entering into the great company of the mountains.  Presently Mary caught the glimmer of something white against the dark background of the hills.  It gleamed like a snow-bank, though they were far below the snow-line on the mountain-side they were climbing.

“Well, here be camp,” announced Mrs. Yellett.  What Mary had taken for a bank of snow was a huge, canvas-covered wagon.  Several dogs ran down to greet the buckboard, barking a welcome.  In the background was a shadowy group, huge of stature, making its way down the mountain-path.  “And here’s all the children come to meet teacher.”  Mrs. Yellett’s tone was tenderly maternal, as if it was something of a feat for the children to walk down the mountain-path to meet their teacher.  But Mary, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of her little pupils, could discover nothing but a group of persons that seemed to be the sole survivors of some titanic race.  Not one among them but seemed to have reached the high-water mark of six feet.  Was it an optical illusion, a hallucination born of the wonderful starlight?  Or were they as huge as they seemed?  The young men looked giants, the girls as if they had wandered out of the first chapters of Genesis.  Their mother introduced them.  They all had huge, warm, perspiring hands, with grips like bears.  Mary looked about for a house into which she could escape to gather her scattered faculties, but the starlight, yellow and luminous, revealed none.  There was the huge covered wagon that she had taken for a snow-bank, there was a small tent, there were two light wagons, there were dogs innumerable, but there was no sign of a house.

“What do you think of it?” inquired Mrs. Yellett, smilingly, anticipating a favorable answer.

“It’s almost too beautiful to leave.”  Mary innocently supposed that Mrs. Yellett referred to the starlit landscape.  “But I’m so tired, Mrs. Yellett, and so glad to get to a real home at last, that I’m going to ask if you will not show me the way to the house so that I may go to bed right away.”

This apparently reasonable request was greeted by a fine chorus of titanic laughter from Mary’s pupils.  Mrs. Yellett waved her hand over the surrounding landscape in comprehensive gesture.

“Ain’t all this large enough for you?” she asked, gayly.

“You mean the mountains?  They’re wonderful.  But—­I really think I’d like to go in the house.”

“I shore hope you ain’t figgerin’ on goin’ into no house, ’cause there ain’t no house to go into.”  She laughed merrily, as if the idea of such an effete luxury as a house were amusing.  “This yere family ’ain’t ever had a house—­it camps.”

Mary gasped.  The real meaning of words no longer had the power of making an impression on her.  If Mrs. Yellett had announced that they were in the habit of sleeping in the moon, it would not have surprised her.