“Rood mought take his gredge out on you-uns some other way, Mink,” he suggested presently. He felt bound in conscience to present the contingency. “I’m ekal ter him,” said Mink hardily. In fact, Mink bore the most lightsome spirit down the mountain, scarcely to be expected in a man who goes to invite a more personal direction of the machinations of a feud. He would have dared far more to secure a respite from the loneliness of Piomingo Bald, to say nothing of the opportunity of mingling in the festivity of shooting for beef. He had not even a qualm of regret for the solitary herder whom he left standing at the fence, gazing down at him a trifle wistfully. He was out of sight presently, but Doaks heard the mare’s hoofs long after he had disappeared,—the more distinctly, because of the animal’s habit of striking her hind feet together. The mists had lifted. It was a positive happiness to Mink to watch the forests expand, as he went down and down the rugged ways of the herders’ trail. There were taller trees on every hand; great beds of ferns, their fronds matted together, began to appear; impenetrable jungles of the laurel stretched all along the deep ravines. Now and then a flash of crimson rejoiced the sight; from far gleamed the red cones of the cucumber tree; the trumpet-flower blossomed in the darkling places; he marked the lustre of the partridge-berry by the wayside. The earth was moist from the recent rains, as the narrow, slippery path, curving between a sheer declivity on one side and an almost perpendicular ascent on the other, might testify. His mare traveled it in a devil-may-care fashion, snatching as she went at leaves on the slope above, regardless that a false step would precipitate both herself and her rider into eternity. Noticing this breach of manners, Mink now and then gave a reckless jerk at the bit. “Dad-burn ye! ye buzzard! A greedy body would ’low ye hed never hearn tell o’ nuthin’ ter eat afore in this worl’!” Here it was only, above these depths, that he might see the sky,—afar off, as was meet that it should be: he, the earthling, had no kinship with its austere infinities. The growths of the forest were now of incredible magnitude and magnificence. Up and up towered the massive boles, with a canopy of leaves so dense that all the firmament was effaced, and the sunshine trickling through had a white, tempered glister like the moonbeams. What infinite stretches of solitudes! What measureless mountain wilds! In these solemn spaces Silence herself walked unshod. Yet stay! A crystalline vibration, a tinkling tremor, a voice smiting the air, so delicately attuned to all sylvan rhythms, with an accent so fine, so faint,—surely, some oread a-singing!