After such a ride they one day dismounted in a grassy opening among the trees that bordered a mountain canyon. The waters of ages had chiselled a sharp passage through the rock, and the green stream now swirled in its rapid course a hundred feet below. Fragments of rock, loosened by the sun and wind and frost of centuries, had fallen from time to time, leaving sheltered nooks and shelves in the walls of the canyon. In one of these crevices they found a flat stone that gave comfortable seating, and here they rested while the horses browsed their afternoon meal on the grass above. Little irregular bits of stone had broken off the parent rock, and for awhile they amused themselves with tossing these into the water. But both were conscious of a gradually increasing tension in the atmosphere. For days the boy had been moody. It was evident he was harbouring something that was calling through his nature for expression, and Irene knew that this afternoon he would talk of more than trees and rocks and footprints of the wild things of the forest. "Your father is gettin' along well," he said at length. "Yes," she answered. "He has had a good holiday, even with his broken leg. He is looking ever so much better." "You will be goin' away before long," he continued. "Yes," she answered, soberly, and waited. "Things about here ain't goin' to be the same after you're gone," he went on. He was avoiding her eyes and industriously throwing bits of crumbled rock into the canyon. He wore no coat, and the neck of his shirt was open, for the day was warm. Had he caught her side-long glances even his slow, self-deprecating mind must have read their admiration. But he kept his eyes fixed on the green water. "You see," he said, "before you came it was different. I didn't know what I was missin', an' so it didn't matter. Not but what I was dog-sick of it at times, but still I thought I was livin',--thought this was life, and, of course, now I know it ain't. At least, it won't be after you're gone." "That's strange," she said, not in direct answer to his remark, but as a soliloquy on it as she turned it over in her mind. "This life, now, seems empty to you. All my old life seems empty to me. This seems to me the real life, out here in the foothills, with the trees, and the mountains, and--and our horses, you know."