The thought of death in the gaunt gorge, with the looming cliffs on either side and many a black chasm below; with only the starveling shrubs to grow, and the moon to light the stark spaces as of a desert world; with the white mists to hide the familiar valley, and a dark mountain to gloom afar, while the lonely sky bent above, induced a strangely isolated feeling, and the recollection of a certain forlorn fate came ghastly and drear into his mind. It was a long time ago, he said to himself, and men die daily; why should he think, with a numb chill upon him, of Samuel Keale? He glanced upward among the black shadows of the jagged rock, sharply outlined in the moon’s light upon the gray sandstone. Suddenly a moving shadow was among them: a wolf, black and grisly, with a lowered tail and a keen muzzle, stood upon the summit, and looked curiously, with doubtful glittering eyes and a quivering snuffing nostril, at the motionless figure below. The cowardly animal sprang back affrighted, when Jepson stirred. He had drawn a broad-bladed knife, and passed his hand quickly along its keen edge. But until his stentorian halloo roused the sleeping echoes with a thousand weird shouts, the animal showed sign of flight. It crouched like a frightened dog; then turned, and ran cowering and silent along the summit, pausing only once to cast a swift glance backward, and so out of sight. “Ef ye hed been hongry, Mister Wolf, ye’d hev kem down hyar ter see what I be made out’n. Too many good sheep an’ yearlin’ cattle pastured round them thar mountings fur ye ter git fightin’ hongry till winter-time.” He put up his knife, but his mind was tenacious of its impressions. The wolf had added another grim suggestion to the idea of death alone among the mountains, in the depths of the unexplored, inaccessible cave. “’Tain’t fur from hyarabouts, I hearn tell,” he said. Then he took himself to task. “I hev got ter quit this hyar way o’ lopin’ in the woods like I war bereft. I’ll git teched in the head, ef I don’t mind. Folks are beginnin’ ter laff at me, ennyhows, ’bout talkin’ so much ’bout them in the Bible. Las’ time I war at the Settlemint, them boys thar at the store axed me, ‘How’s Solomon, an’ Mrs. Solomon?’ Durn ’em! I’d hate, though, fur Moses an’ David an’ them ter kem back, ef they could, an’ find me so beset an’ tuk up ’bout them an’ thar doin’s. I’ll be bound they wouldn’t take ez much notice o’ me.”