Now it so chanced that Tregarvon had never visited the “Pocket,” and though he knew, from Carfax’s description of the locality, that it could not be more than a mile or two beyond Highmount, he was not aware that the path he had chosen was not the right one. Having plenty of other things to think about, he paid little attention to his surroundings until, at the end of a half-hour, he found that the path, which had been growing indistinct, had disappeared entirely, leaving him in a region of deep ravines with their slopes heavily wooded; hollows boulder-strewn, in which the old-growth timber stood thickly, with only a fallen and rotting trunk here and there to show where the tan-bark gatherers had slain some monarch of the forest for the paltry stripping of its outer skin--mute testimony to the waste of a nation. It was not until after he had covered distance enough, as he thought, to have taken him all the way across from Highmount to the western brow of the mountain, that he saw a man--whom he took to be Hartridge--sitting upon a flat stone in the shadow of a great boulder on the opposite side of a small mountain brook. Just as he was about to call out and make his presence known, the man sprang to his feet suddenly, as if in alarm, and whipped a weapon from his pocket. Obeying the instinct of self-preservation in pure automatism, Tregarvon dropped silently behind the nearest boulder on his own side of the stream. When he looked again he saw that the man was not Hartridge; he was a much younger man; a handsome young fellow, well-built and athletic-looking, with nothing in his appearance to connect him with the mountain and its natives. The attitude of strained anxiety into which the quick leap afoot had thrown him lasted only for a moment. While Tregarvon looked, a warbling bird whistle rose shrill and clear on the windless air. The watcher saw the young man hastily pocket the pistol and heard him whistle a reply. Almost at the same instant the figure of a woman appeared at the buried up-hill heel of the great boulder. She stood for a moment in the yellow light of the westering sun, long enough for Tregarvon to recognize her beyond any question of doubt. Then she ran, slipping and sliding, down the leaf-carpeted hazard slope, to be caught in the arms of the waiting man.