"Hark!" said Margaret Hayley, in a louder voice than either had before used, and a voice that had a perceptible tremor in it like that of fright. "What did you hear?" asked the Captain. "Listen--I want to hear what that man was saying." "H. T." was speaking, just below. "No, I have never been here before," he said. "Strangely enough, some of the greatest curiosities of the continent are neglected by just such fools as myself, until too old or too busy or too careworn to enjoy them." "You speak like a jolly old grandfather, and yet you are scarcely as old as myself," answered the rich, sonorous voice of Halstead Rowan. "Well, that is _your_ business. The White Mountains are no novelty to me, or any other mountains, I believe, North of the Isthmus." "Is there any thing finer than this, at this moment, among them all?" "No, and I doubt if there is any thing finer on earth!" was the enthusiastic reply. "And by the way, even _I_ have not happened to see the full moon on the face of the Old Man, before. It is a magnificent sight--a new sensation." "How long has it stood so, I wonder? Since creation?" said the voice of "H. T.," "or did the Flood hurl those masses of stone into so unaccountable an accidental position?" "Haven't the most remote idea!" answered Rowan, gayly. "I have often thought of it, though, when looking at the marvel in the sunlight. But I have never been able to get any farther back than the idea how the winds must have howled and the rains beaten around that immobile face, age after age, while whole generations of the men after whom the face is apparently copied as a mockery, have been catching cold and dying from a mere puff of air on the head or a pair of wet feet." "The eternal--the immovable!" said "H. T.," his voice so solemn and impressive that it was evident his words were only a faint representation of the inner feeling. "I know one thing that it has been, without a doubt," said Rowan. "When the whole country was filled with Indians of a somewhat nobler character than the miserable wretches that alternately beg and murder on the Western plains, there is not much question that they must have worshipped it as the face of the Great Manitou, looking down upon them in anger or in love, as the storm-cloud swept around it or the summer sun tinted it with an iron smile."