refulgent with color, massive, multitudinous, illimitable, the compass of the human vision failing to trace further than the far horizon the endless ranges still rising tier upon tier. Whether the inmates of the house consciously derived aught from the scene, from its calm, its splendor of extent that might serve to widen the imagination, its vast resources of suggestion, one of them spent many idle hours in gazing upon it. Often Jack Espey lay all the forenoon upon the hay in the loft of the little barn, watching through the bare logs, guiltless of "chinking," the shadows dwindling on the hazy indented slopes, blue in the sunshine, amethyst in the shade. The white clouds would sail when the wind was fair, or in still noontides would lie at anchor off the great shimmering domes. Sometimes these loiterings were prolonged till the pageants of sunset-tide were on the march along the great purple western slopes, and from the shipping of the skies floated every pennant of splendid color; the sun, with the burnished dazzling quality quenched in the great blood-red sphere, would go slowly dropping down behind the western ranges, leaving the sky of a delicate amber tint with scarlet strata, amongst which incongruous gorgeousness the evening star would shine with a pure, pensive white radiance. The loft of the flimsy little barn, but now all aglow with bars of gold alternating with brown shadow as the sunlight fell between the logs, gilding even the tissues of cobweb and the masses of hay, would sink into a dull, dusky monochrome. A shadow would seem to fall upon his spirit. The anxiety to which the contemplative, languorous idleness had granted surcease roused itself anew; the voices from the house, never silent, were reasserted upon his attention, and the necessity would supervene of joining the family circle,--a necessity sometimes infinitely repugnant to his troubled soul, craving solitude for its indulgence of woe, and hardly able to maintain the cheerful disguise which must needs screen it. So poor were his arts of deception that perhaps they would scarcely have served his purpose elsewhere, but here he and his peculiarities were given scant heed. He could not have found another domicile, in all the length and breadth of the country, where he could have been installed and have excited so little attention and curiosity. And indeed, to Mrs. Larrabee, the head of the house, he was only one more in addition to the rest of the tribe that must be warmed and fed and housed, or, as she expressed it, "tucked away somewhar." She always was equal to the emergency, although whenever Espey entered the large circle about the fireside it seemed to have been recruited somewhere, and more numerous than at his last survey.