She paused presently with a deeply reflective countenance, shown half in the glow of the fire, and half in the brilliant moonlight, falling through the open window and door. “I wonder which o’ these hyar mounting gals the idjit ’lows looks like a n’angel. Mus’ hev been Em’line Bolter, ’ceptin’ I reckon no n’angel air ez freckled ez her,—reg’lar tur-r-key-aig; or else Ar’bella Jane Perkins, though she air some cornsider’ble red-headed. But laws-a-massy, that don’t make no diff’ence. When a man sets out ter be a fool, an’ fall in love, Providence in its mercy warps his judgment, an’ mos’ enny gal mought ’pear like a n’angel. Ye Marcelly, quit hangin’ on that door, a-saggin’ it off’n the henges an’ a-stare-gazin the moon.” It was lower now in the sky, and showed through the fringes of the pines; its pensive light was in the girl’s lustrous eyes a moment longer, and then the door was closed. XIX. It was close upon dawn when Rathburn reached his destination. He could hardly have defined the time when he began to appreciate that daylight had invaded the mystic moonlit splendors. There the golden sphere still hung; out of it the fine ethereal fires were dying—paling, and growing yet more dim—above the purple Chilhowee; definiteness was gradually evolving out of the shadows; a valley was shaping its sinuous course where violet vagueness had seemed a plenitude of form and fixity before. A dull, gray, hard color never known in the fine lunar chromatics, lay upon a stretch of leafless woods. A dark, sombre green, cold and funereal, betokened the pines and the laurel groves. As the moon dulled and the day dallied, stars had suddenly bloomed out with palpitating splendor. One of a white glister shone above the rugged eastern crags, and was the herald of the dawn. He was feeling the strength of the matutinal resurrection in his veins, in his lungs, expanding to its fine, keen freshness. He hardly realized that he had been awake all night, after a long day’s tramp with his pick through the rugged gorges of the mountains. He had long since ceased to glance apprehensively to the right and left, lest there might be still an avenger lurking upon his track, as he took his way along the herder’s trail through the savage wilderness. Confidence came renewed with renewed freedom. He stopped to see, through a gap in the mountain, all along the summits of the misty purple ranges, a line of vermilion rise, expanding into the broad spaces of the pale sky, for the living sun was in the vital air. He hears an eagle cry, the sound infinitely wild and joyous with a savage enthusiasm in life; the splendid sweep of the great bird’s wings describe long curves in the light air, and the yellow glow slants so far, so far! A warm day,—for where is the frost? That fine vaporous tissue, all that there is to show for those premonitions of winter in the vanished white rime! All going down and down to Hang-Over Mountain, to lurk about the cold currents of the Little Tennessee.