Above the clouds, swales of which they saw sweeping by, half way down the mountain--above the earth, its cares and its sorrows, it seemed to them for the moment that they stood; and only those who have made such a pilgrimage can realize the glory of that hour. The mountains of Vermont North-westward, those of Canada North-eastward, those of Massachusetts to the South and the Franconia range full to the West; lakes lying like splashes of molten silver at their feet and rivers fluttering like blue silken ribbons far away; towns nestled in the gorges and hamlets glimmering up from the depths of the ravines; long miles of valleys filled with sunlight, as if the very god of day had stooped down and left them full of the warmth of his loving kiss; peak upon peak rising behind and beyond each other, and each tinted with some new and richer hue, from gold to purple and from sunny green to dark and sombre brown; beyond all, and on the extreme verge of the sight-line to the East, one long low glint of light that told of the far Atlantic breaking in shimmering waves on the rocky coast of Maine; the world so far beneath as to be a myth and an unreality, distance annihilated, and the clear, pure air drank in by the grateful lungs appearing to be a foretaste of that some day to be breathed on the summit of the Eternal Hills,--these were the sights and these the sensations amid which the dark cheek of Horace Townsend seemed touched with a light that did not beam upon it in the valleys below, with his eyes grown humid and utterance choked by intense feeling; while all the heart of glorious womanhood in Clara Vanderlyn fluttered up in the truest worship of that God who had formed the earth so beautiful; and even Halstead Rowan once more forgot pride, poverty, insult, and the physical exuberance which made either endurable, to fold his strong arms in silence, lift the innate reverence of his thoughts to the Eternal and the Inevitable, and vow to submit with childlike faith to all of triumph or humiliation that might be ordained in the future. CHAPTER XVII. HORACE TOWNSEND WITH A LADY IN CHARGE--AN ADVENTURE OVER THE "GULF OF MEXICO"--CLARA VANDERLYN IN DEADLY PERIL--A MOMENT OF HORROR--HALSTEAD ROWAN AND A DISPLAY OF THE COMANCHE RIDING--TOWNSEND'S ECLIPSE--THE RETURN TO THE CRAWFORD--MARGARET HAYLEY AGAIN, AND A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD.