But Kenniston, whose already keen observation was whetted by the appreciation of the enmity he sustained and the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen him, followed Luther's motion with an alert, apprehending eye, and hardly lost sight of him even when the mists swept between them and gave him but a distorted looming presentment of the young mountaineer; though thus caricatured, Luther never lost for a moment his uncharacteristic and already significant demeanor. Small as the group was, the figures of two or three were now and again abstracted from it, as if literally caught up in the clouds, slowly materializing again as the mists shifted. The horses hard by were sometimes invisible in the dense white medium, and anon only their heads would appear here and there in various attitudes, like studies for a cavalry subject. Even the Big Hollow Boulder, the corner of the lines, seemed to recede, and again was near at hand, in a manner altogether inconsistent with its accepted attributes of immovability as a monument of boundary. The great felled trees, lying close by athwart the outcropping ledges of rock,--traces of the mountain tempest,--were obliterated and invisible in the encompassing whiteness. The chilly sound of the rain beating heavily below in the valley rose on the dank air, and more than once the white gauzy suffusions of the encompassing vapor were pervaded with a transient yellow glow, broad and innocuous reflections of the lightning of the storm-cloud of the lower levels. The surveyor was a tall, well-knit man of forty-five or fifty, with a square, short, grizzled beard decorating his chin, high cheek-bones, a blunt nose, a far-seeing gray eye, and a quid of tobacco that seemed to render him indifferent to the joys of conversation. His high boots were drawn to the knees over his trousers,--a style affected by the rest of the party; Kenniston's correct equestrian garb being sufficiently dissimilar to give him that air of peculiarity and modishness that somehow seems so unworthy and flippant among plain and humble folk, as if they cared for better things than fashion. It made him a trifle ill at ease, and he had a sense of being out of his sphere, added to the conviction of the vicinage of enemies. He stood with his riding-whip in his hand beside the surveyor as he adjusted his instrument, conscious of sustaining the curious attention of the chain-bearers, two stalwart young fellows arrayed in brown jeans and heavy boots, amply competent for the task of carrying the chain through that rugged wilderness; conscious, too, of Cap'n Lucy's brilliant, laughing, handsome eyes, the doubtful, furtive glances of the others, and Luther's anxious, troubled gaze.