of the more distant life in the settlement.  The far-off barking of a dog, a lost shout, the indistinct murmur of some nearer watercourse—­mere phantoms of sound—­made the silence more irritating.  With a sudden resolution she arose, dressed herself quietly and completely, threw a heavy cloak over her head and shoulders, and opened the door between the living-room and her own.  Her father was sleeping soundly in his bunk in the corner.  She passed noiselessly through the room, opened the lightly fastened door, and stepped out into the night.

In the irritation and disgust of her walk hither, she had never noticed the situation of the cabin, as it nestled on the slope at the fringe of the woods; in the preoccupation of her disappointment and the mechanical putting away of her things, she had never looked once from the window of her room, or glanced backward out of the door that she had entered.  The view before her was a revelation—­a reproach, a surprise that took away her breath.  Over her shoulders the newly risen moon poured a flood of silvery light, stretching from her feet across the shining bars of the river to the opposite bank, and on up to the very crest of the Devil’s Spur—­no longer a huge bulk of crushing shadow, but the steady exaltation of plateau, spur, and terrace clothed with replete and unutterable beauty.  In this magical light that beauty seemed to be sustained and carried along by the river winding at its base, lifted again to the broad shoulder of the mountain, and lost only in the distant vista of death-like, overcrowning snow.  Behind and above where she stood the towering woods seemed to be waiting with opened ranks to absorb her with the little cabin she had quitted, dwarfed into insignificance in the vast prospect; but nowhere was there another sign or indication of human life and habitation.  She looked in vain for the settlement, for the rugged ditches, the scattered cabins, and the unsightly heaps of gravel.  In the glamour of the moonlight they had vanished; a veil of silver-gray vapor touched here and there with ebony shadows masked its site.  A black strip beyond was the river bank.  All else was changed.  With a sudden sense of awe and loneliness she turned to the cabin and its sleeping inmates—­all that seemed left to her in the vast and stupendous domination of rock and wood and sky.

But in another moment the loneliness passed.  A new and delicious sense of an infinite hospitality and friendliness in their silent presence began to possess her.  This same slighted, forgotten, uncomprehended, but still foolish and forgiving Nature seemed to be bending over her frightened and listening ear with vague but thrilling murmurings of freedom and independence.  She felt her heart expand with its wholesome breath, her soul fill with its sustaining truth.

She felt—­

What was that?

An unmistakable outburst of a drunken song at the foot of the slope:—­

     “Oh, my name it is Johnny from Pike,
     I’m h-ll on a spree or a strike.” . . .