Anything more delicious than the early morning air in the Black Canyon it would be difficult to imagine.  Cool, odorous with pines and with the breath of the mountains, it was like a zestful draught of iced summer.  Close beside the track ran a wondrous river which seemed made of melted jewels, so curiously brilliant were its waters and mixed of so many hues.  Its course among the rocks was a flash of foaming rapids, broken here and there by pools of exquisite blue-green, deepening into inky-violet under the shadow of the cliffs.  And such cliffs!—­one, two, three thousand feet high; not deep-colored like those about St. Helen’s, but of steadfast mountain hues and of magnificent forms,—­buttresses and spires; crags whose bases were lost in untrodden forests; needle-sharp pinnacles like the Swiss Aiguilles.  The morning was just making its way into the canyon; and the loftier tops flashed with yellow sun, while the rest were still in cold shadow.

Breakfast was just ready when the hand-car arrived again at the upper end of the gorge, and loud were the reproaches which met the happy three as they alighted from it.  Phil was particularly afflicted.

“I call it mean not to wake a fellow,” he said.

“But a fellow was so sound asleep,” said Clover, “I really hadn’t the heart.  I did peep in at your curtain, and if you had moved so much as a finger, perhaps I should have called you; but you didn’t.”

The return journey was equally fortunate, and the party reached St. Helen’s late in the evening of the second day, in what Mr. Wade called “excellent form.”  Monday brought the young men from the ranch in again; and another fortnight passed happily, Clover’s three “leaves” being most faithfully attentive to their central point of attraction.  “Three is a good many,” as Marian Chase had said, but all girls like to be liked, and Clover did not find this, her first little experience of the kind, at all disagreeable.

The excursion to the Marshall Pass, however, had an after effect which was not so pleasant.  Either the high elevation had disagreed with Phil, or he had taken a little cold; at all events, he was distinctly less well.  With the lowering of his physical forces came a corresponding depression of spirits.  Mrs. Watson worried him, the sick people troubled him, the sound of coughing depressed him, his appetite nagged, and his sleep was broken.  Clover felt that he must have a change, and consulted Dr. Hope, who advised their going to the Ute Valley for a month.

This involved giving up their rooms at Mrs. Marsh’s, which was a pity, as it was by no means certain that they would be able to get them again later.  Clover regretted this; but Fate, as Fate often does, brought a compensation.  Mrs. Watson had no mind whatever for the Ute Valley.