Wayland, though incapable of comment--so great was the demand upon his lungs--was not too tired to admire the power and resolution of the girl, who seemed not to suffer any special inconvenience from the rarefied air. The dryness of his open mouth, the throbbing of his troubled pulse, the roaring of his breath, brought to him with increasing dismay the fact that he had overlooked another phase of the ranger's job. "I couldn't chop a hole through one of these windfalls in a week," he admitted, as McFarlane's blade again liberated them from a fallen tree. "To do office work at six thousand feet is quite different from swinging an ax up here at timber-line," he said to the girl. "I guess my chest is too narrow for high altitudes." "Oh, you'll get used to it," she replied, cheerily. "I always feel it a little at first; but I really think it's good for a body, kind o' stretches the lungs." Nevertheless, she eyed him with furtive anxiety. He was beginning to be hungry also--he had eaten a very early breakfast--and he fell to wondering just where and when they were to camp; but he endured in silence. "So long as Berrie makes no complaint my mouth is shut," he told himself. "Surely I can stand it if she can." And so struggled on. Up and up the pathway looped, crossing minute little boggy meadows, on whose bottomless ooze the grass shook like a blanket, descending steep ravines and climbing back to dark and muddy slopes. The forest was dripping, green, and silent now, a mysterious menacing jungle. All the warmth and magic of the golden forest below was lost as though it belonged to another and sunnier world. Nothing could be seen of the high, snow-flecked peaks which had allured them from the valley. All about them drifted the clouds, and yet through the mist the flushed face of the girl glowed like a dew-wet rose, and the imperturbable Supervisor jogged his remorseless, unhesitating way toward the dense, ascending night. "I'm glad I'm not riding this pass alone," Wayland said, as they paused again for breath. "So am I," she answered; but her thought was not his. She was happy at the prospect of teaching him how to camp. At last they reached the ragged edge of timber-line, and there, rolling away under the mist, lay the bare, grassy, upward-climbing, naked neck of the great peak. The wind had grown keener moment by moment, and when they left the storm-twisted pines below, its breath had a wintry nip. The rain had ceased to fall, but the clouds still hung densely to the loftiest summits. It was a sinister yet beautiful world--a world as silent as a dream, and through the short, thick grass the slender trail ran like a timid serpent. The hour seemed to have neither daytime nor season. All was obscure, mysterious, engulfing, and hostile. Had he been alone the youth would have been appalled by the prospect.