“’Pears-like ter me ez I couldn’t herd cattle along of a mo’ low-sperited, say-nuthin’ critter’n ye be, Ben,” his partner remarked one day, sauntering up the slope and joining him on the summit. “Ye jes’ set up hyar on the bald an’ gape at Thunderhead like ez ef ye war bereft. Now, down in the cove ye always air toler’ble good company,—nimble-tongued ez ennybody.” He thrust his cob-pipe into his mouth and pulled away silently at it, gazing at the smoke as it curled up with delicate sinuosity and transparently blue. Ben Doaks did not reply at once. There was no need of haste on Piomingo Bald. “Waal, I dunno but it air a sorter lonesome place, an’ a-body don’t feel much like talkin’ no-ways,” he drawled at last. “But ye’ll git used ter it, Mink,” he added, in leisurely encouragement. “Ye’ll git used ter it, arter a while.” Mink looked down disconsolately at the vast array of mountains below him on every side. The nearest were all tinged with a dusky purple, except for the occasional bare, garnet-colored stretches of the “fire-scalds,” relics of the desolation when the woods were burned; the varying tints were sublimated to blue in the distance; then through every charmed gradation of ethereal azure the ranges faded into the invisible spaces that we wot not of. There was something strangely overwhelming in the stupendous expanse of the landscape. It abashed the widest liberties of fancy. Somehow it disconcerted all past experience, all previous prejudice, all credence in other conditions of life. The fact was visibly presented to the eye that the world is made of mountains. That finite quality of the mind, aptly expressing itself in mensuration, might find a certain relief in taking note of the curious “bald” itself,—seeming some three or four hundred bare acres on the summit. Wild grass grows upon its gradual slope; clumps of huckleberry bushes appear here and there; occasional ledges of rock crop out. A hardy flower will turn a smiling face responsive to the measured patronage of the chilly sunshine in this rare air. The solemnity of the silence is broken only by the occasional tinkling of cow-bells from the herds of cattle among the woods lower down on the mountain side. “I never kin git used ter it,” said Mink, desperately. “I never kin git used ter hevin’ sech dumbness about me, an’ seein’ the time go so slow. ’Pears ter me some fower or five hunderd year sence we eat brekfus’,—an’ I ain’t hongry, nuther.”