If the expression of Glover's face, returning somewhat the ridicule heaped on him, was intended to pique the interest of the sightseers it was effective. He was restored, provisionally, to favor; his suggestion that after dinner they take horses for the ride up Pilot Mountain to where the Gap could be seen by moonlight was eagerly adopted, and Mrs. Whitney's objection to dressing again was put down. Marie, fearing the hardship, demurred, but Glover woke to so lively interest, and promised the trip should be so easy that when she consented to go he made it his affair to attend directly to her comfort and safety. He summoned one particular liveryman, not a favorite at the fashionable hotel, and to him gave especial injunctions about the horses. The girths Glover himself went over at starting, and in the riding he kept near Marie. Lighted by the stars, they left the hotel in the early evening. "How are you to find your way, Mr. Glover?" asked Marie, as they threaded the path He led her into after they had reached the mountain. "Is this the road we came on?" "I could climb Pilot blindfolded, I reckon. When we came in here I ran surveys all around the old fellow, switchbacks and everything. The line is a Chinese puzzle about here for ten miles. The path you're on now is an old Indian trail out of Devil's Gap. The guides don't use it because it is too long. The Gap is a ten-dollar trip, in any case, and naturally they make it the shortest way." For thirty minutes they rode in darkness, then leaving a sharp defile they emerged on a plateau. Across the Sinks the moon was rising full and into a clear sky. To the right twinkled the lights of Glen Tarn, and below them yawned the unspeakable wrench in the granite shoulders of the Pilot range called Devil's Gap. Out of its appalling darkness projected miles of silvered spurs tipped like grinning teeth by the light of the moon. "There are a good many Devil's Gaps in the Rockies," said Glover, after the silence had been broken; "but, I imagine, if the devil condescends to acknowledge any he wouldn't disclaim this." Gertrude stood beside her sister. "You are quite right," she admitted. "We have spent our month here and missed the only overpowering spectacle. This is Dante." "Indeed it is," he assented, eagerly. "I must tell you. The first time I got into the Gap with a locating party I had a volume of Dante in my pack. It is an unfortunate trait of mine that in reading I am compelled to chart the topography of a story as I go along. In the 'Inferno' I could never get head or tail of the topography. One night we camped on this very ledge. In the night the horses roused me. When I opened the tent fly the moon was up, about where it is now. I stood till I nearly froze, looking--but I thought after that I could chart the 'Inferno.' If it weren't so dry, or if we were going to stay all night, I should have a camp-fire; but it wouldn't do, and before you get cold we must start back.