CHAPTER IX THE STRUGGLE ON THE HEIGHT In all great mountain ranges there are what might be called heights of man and heights of nature. There are always hills that seem to invite the puny human agility: that hold at their summits resting-places whence men may obtain their “view” and begin their descent again, filled with pride at the conquest of inconsequent difficulties. But there are other heights that were not made for such: places which, even should man attain to them, refuse him his vain reward, bind him about with a spell of bewildered awe, and, if he safely reach his earth-kennel once more, leave him with the sense that he has been refused his due. Heights such as these owe nothing to humanity. They are the retreating-places of defeated nature. To man they are not natural. Their high glory is not for him. Towering into regions above slow-drifting clouds, where sun and stars and moon lean close on high, they are in communion with eternity. Nor is their secret of the ages to be borne away and exploited in the depths below. Such a height as this rose up beyond the little hamlet of the mountain stream. Its peak, a spirelike pinnacle, not so lofty when compared with Himalayan or even Alpine heights, rose up from a high, rounded plateau which itself lay above the tops of the surrounding hills. On the far side of the mountain the slope ran gradually down to the basin of a tiny mountain lake, that lay five hundred feet above the valley level. But on the south end of this heavenly plateau, rocks jutted down in a vast, tumbling mass, to a depth of three thousand feet. Alone in its far summit, sunlit, glorious, the strange mountain top might have been hailed king of the whole range. And, indeed, it was one of the few mountains of the Vindhyas distinctive enough to possess a name. The valley dwellers called it the “Silver Peak”; and its name fitted it well. The eastern slope was densely wooded. The rocks at the base of the peak on the plateau were filled with caves; yet animals and reptiles shunned these easy abodes. Only sure-flying birds, eagles and falcons and kingfishers and floriken, swept through its forests and over its height, unawed by the inviolable stillness. But this stillness, unbroken since the day the mountain rose from the earth’s seething surface, was something to be feared. Here man had been defeated in the moment of his triumph. His blatant voice, lifted upon this royal height, had shrunk to a faint whisper; and he had fled his sacrilege in shame.