Meanwhile the Supervisor was calmly leading the way upward, vaguely conscious of the magical air and mystic landscape in which his young folk floated as if on wings, thinking busily of the improvements which were still necessary in the trail, and weighing with care the clouds which still lingered upon the tallest summits, as if debating whether to go or to stay. He had never been an imaginative soul, and now that age had somewhat dimmed his eyes and blunted his senses he was placidly content with his path. The rapture of the lover, the song of the poet, had long since abandoned his heart. And yet he was not completely oblivious. To him it was a nice day, but a "weather breeder." "I wonder if I shall ever ride through this mountain world as unmoved as he seems to be?" Norcross asked himself, after some jarring prosaic remark from his chief. "I am glad Berrie responds to it." At last they left these lower, wondrous forest aisles and entered the unbroken cloak of firs whose dark and silent deeps had a stern beauty all their own; but the young people looked back upon the glowing world below with wistful hearts. Back and forth across a long, down-sweeping ridge they wove their toilsome way toward the clouds, which grew each hour more formidable, awesome with their weight, ponderous as continents in their majesty of movement. The horses began to labor with roaring breath, and Wayland, dismounting to lighten his pony's burden, was dismayed to discover how thin the air had become. Even to walk unburdened gave him a smothering pain in his breast. "Better stay on," called the girl. "My rule is to ride the hill going up and walk it going down. Down hill is harder on a horse than going up." Nevertheless he persisted in clambering up some of the steepest parts of the trail, and was increasingly dismayed by the endless upward reaches of the foot-hills. A dozen times he thought, "We must be nearly at the top," and then other and far higher ridges suddenly developed. Occasionally the Supervisor was forced to unsling an ax and chop his way through a fallen tree, and each time the student hurried to the spot, ready to aid, but was quite useless. He admired the ease and skill with which the older man put his shining blade through the largest bole, and wondered if he could ever learn to do as well. "One of the first essentials of a ranger's training is to learn to swing an ax," remarked McFarlane, "and you never want to be without a real tool. _I_ won't stand for a hatchet ranger." Berrie called attention to the marks on the trees. "This is the government sign--a long blaze with two notches above it. You can trust these trails; they lead somewhere." "As you ride a trail study how to improve it," added the Supervisor, sheathing his ax. "They can all be improved."