But for the changing weather signs the old man's altered demeanor might have encountered other notice than Kenniston's keen watchfulness. Now and again the thunder pealed among the mountain tops, and the slate-colored cloud had spread until it overhung all the visible world, when they once more drew so near to the verge of the precipice as to have glimpses of the densely wooded cove and the circling mountains. The ranges were all sombre gray or deeply purple, save far away, where some rift in the clouds admitted a skein of sunbeams suspended in fibrous effect over a distant slope that was a weird yellowish-green in this scant illumination which had fallen to its share, rendered more marked by the dull estate of its dun-tinted and purple compeers. Nearer at hand, the shadows were deepening momently in the forest. Once or twice, when the sharp blades of the lightnings cleft them, the lifeless bronze aisles of the woods sprang into a transient glare of brilliant green that was hardly less dazzling, and again the thunder pealed. Two or three of the mountaineers left the party, evidently with no mind to be drenched. A man with a hacking cough remained, animated by that indisposition to self-denial, that avidity of enjoyment, that determination to seize all which niggard life holds out, characteristic of a type of consumptive invalids. "'Tain't goin' ter rain," he declared buoyantly. It might seem that nothing less potent than powder and lead could wean from the sight of processioning the land the two denizens of Panther Flats. They patrolled every step that the surveyor took. Whenever he paused, they came up and stared, fascinated, and at close quarters, at the Jacob's staff. They counted the chains from "out" to "out." As one of them observed to the other, he "was just beginning to get the hang of the thing." He could keep under shelter at a more convenient season. A sudden flash that seemed to pierce the very brain, so did it outdazzle the capacity of vision, a simultaneous deafening detonation, beneath which the mountains appeared to quake and to cry out with a terrible voice, while again and again the echoes repeated the thunderous menace, and then all the air was permeated by a swift electrical illumination, visibly transient, but so instantly succeeded by a similar effect that it seemed permanent,--in this weird glare the surveyor bent once more to take sight. "Old man sticks ter his contrac' like a sick kitten ter a hot brick!" cried Rodolphus Ross to one of the chain-bearers. But the chain-bearers had scant sympathy for the spectators, and visited upon the company in general their displeasure because of the reflections upon the "old man's" work, for which Kenniston alone was responsible. "Whyn't ye wear yer muzzle, 'Dolphus?" the one addressed retorted gruffly.