There was no sound anywhere except the moan of pine trees, and no motion but the perpetual trembling in the aspen undergrowth. The greater trees nearly met above the cañon; the lesser clung along its brink, leaning far out to catch the sun and send broken lights and colors to the water far below. Contrasting with the unchanging twilight and boundless solitude of the forest, the meadow where the tents were pitched seemed to blaze with light, and the three small shelters took on the importance of a settlement, whose visible inhabitants consisted of a pair of mountain magpies possessed of an idle spirit of investigation. The little man coughed a dry inadequate cough to herald his approach, while his foot dislodged a pebble which, rattling down the cañon, sent the magpies to a tree top in affected terror. From under the shelter of his hand he cast a glance about the camp which mastered its small array of unimportant details; two tents, wide open to the air, disclosed elementary sleeping quarters for half a score of men, coarse blankets covering heaps of twigs and pine needles, the bare necessities of a bivouac. The third tent was closed. Evidently perplexed, the visitor stood still. Had anyone been watching him, say from behind the ragged canvas of the closed tent, he must have seemed a nervous, apprehensive little man. There came a sound which might have been a derisive chuckle and might have been a magpie in the trees. The visitor controlled a start and clenched his hands as though summoning courage. Then loudly as one who gives a challenge, he shouted, "Is there anybody here?" The voice was resonant for so small a body, and the echoes caught the last word eagerly, and sent it back, clear from the cañon, faint from where the snow peaks cut the blue, deep from the hollow of the timber. "Here! Here!" as though a scattered army answered to a roll call. Immediately there followed another and louder "Here!" distinctly not an echo, and a gruff ungracious laugh. The multitude of answers must have bewildered the stranger, for he looked everywhere about him, almost stupidly, except toward the only possible hiding place. It needed a second derisive laugh to guide him to the tent whose half-closed flap concealed the only custodian of the camp, a man so tall that in his little shelter he gave the impression of a large animal inadequately caged or in a trap. His black hair fell below the ears; his jaws were hidden by a heavy beard cut square, through some freak of fancy, like the carved beards of human-headed Assyrian beasts. "Ahem! I beg your pardon," began the little man after another cough. "What do you want?" returned the other without looking up. He bent above a tin pan of dough, kneading the pliant stuff almost fiercely, with red knotted knuckles and sinewy forearms. "My name," replied the visitor, "is Sands--Professor Sands of Charbridge University."