"On the contrary, retrospection makes for hollow eyes, and introspection is tinged with bitterness. Keep your face to the future if you would have your soul contented." "And what is your future?" she archly inquired. "These coming minutes while you are here with me." "Really," she flashed him a rather bewildering look, "I did think for once you were going to be serious!" "I am serious," he dug the heel of his boot thoughtfully into the tanbark. "I wish I weren't--or didn't have to be." "Has something gone wrong--with the road?" There was a slight tinge of irony in the suggestion. "No, but something's gone wrong with the world. I wish," he suddenly looked up at her, "that I could be as sure of laying a smooth grade for--for my friends as I am for trains of coal!" "Your friends might have to wait a long time before traveling about," she laughed, but there was a note of apprehension in her voice which again put him on his guard;--and yet he could not help feeling that a partial preparation was only fair to her. "It wouldn't be a bad thing if some people never traveled about," he smiled. "I might then succeed in keeping you here, and those hot-headed mountaineers would stay back in their holes and rot forever, as they ought." "Oh, Brent," she exclaimed, in a hurt voice, "there is such a wealth of splendid human material up there if we can only get hold of it! They're all ambitious--if stirred!" He waited, asking: "And what else?" "Nothing else." "But you didn't say anything nice about Dale!" She laughed. "I thought you knew about Dale--and me; for I'm of the mountains!"