As Kenniston, perturbed because of the weather signs, turned ever and anon in his saddle, as he rode up and up the mountain to the tryst at the Big Hollow Boulder, he saw now the great outward bend of the mountain, with heavily wooded green slopes under the gray sky, all the coloring heightened by the impending tufty white of the masses of silent approaching vapor; the surly crags of the terrace dark with the moisture and the shadow; and the great black mass of the charred wood still sending up a slow, melancholy thread of smoke where the hotel lay in ruins. And again, looking over his shoulder to verify some half-forgotten detail of the scene, the trees twenty feet away were barely visible in the encompassing medium, so fleetly did the impalpable cloud press upon them. To him, unversed in mountain weather, the enterprise of the day seemed impracticable; and he was half surprised to see the surveyor, with his Jacob's staff and his chain-bearers, already waiting at the boundary corner. The figures of the group of men, with their horses picketed hard by, stood out against the inexpressive whiteness about them with the distinctness of sketches on otherwise blank paper. They were easily recognizable even from a distance, and Cap'n Lucy's slim proportions and grace of movement further served to differentiate him from the burlier forms of the others. "Ah, colonel," called out Kenniston as he dismounted, "you here?" It might hardly be believed by one who had experienced its causticity, but Cap'n Lucy's tongue was blunted of much of its capacities under his own roof-tree by the exactions of hospitality. Now he felt the franchise of the free outer air. "I'm a mighty confidin' young critter, I know," he replied, advancing a few paces with his hands thrust in his pockets, "but this hyar man"--he nodded at the surveyor and affected to lower his voice confidentially--"hev got the name o' bein' sorter tricky, an' I 'lowed I hed better kem along like a good neighbor ter holp ye some, else he mought cheat ye out'n a passel o' lan'." The surveyor, a tall, saturnine, businesslike body, took not the slightest notice of this fling, but his two young chain-bearers grinned their appreciation, and the other men laughed outright with evident enjoyment, notably a tall, dark-eyed fellow, whom Kenniston presently recognized as the deputy sheriff, with whom he had already had some slight colloquy touching the possibly incendiary origin of the fire that had destroyed the new building. The recollection furnished him with a retort. He had flushed darkly, and his eyes were angry. "I shouldn't be surprised to be ill treated in any way now in the Cove--after what _has_ happened."