He turned his horse, falling behind her as they resumed the climb. Presently they entered a cool belt of timber. The air was freighted with the balsam of fir and pine, and she looked about her, drawing full breaths; a soft delight rose in her eyes. "Isn’t it the best perfume on earth?" she asked. "At Nisqually it just lacks the tang of the sea. And there are the Alaska cedars they spoke of at the farm. The stream should run through them." The horses quickened their pace and stopped where the rill widened into a pool. They dropped eager muzzles and began to take long, still draughts. She freed her foot from the stirrup and slipped lightly down. "We must fill the flask," she said, "where the spring bubbles through the rock." Stratton tied the horses and followed her up the bank. She reached the place and stooped to fill her saddle-cup. "Oh," she said, pausing between draughts. "It’s the kind of water to dream of hot summer nights; the kind you think of on dusty roads and want desperately." She waited while he drank, watching him expectantly. "Yes," he admitted, "it is a spring to remember in a desert." He stooped to fill the flask, but he did it clumsily, without his usual care, and drenched his sleeve. The pleasure in her face faded; she continued to watch him, but with ruffled brows. "Oh," she said at last, "I wouldn’t have believed you could be so unrelenting; but you are determined to remind me, every step of the way, that you didn’t want to stop at Orcas Island. You’re the most unsatisfactory man, on a trip, I ever knew. Still, you were different last year, on the Paradise trail." "Was I? Well, you see, I keep thinking of that man—in the tide-rip; he stopped here at this stream, to rest." "The man who was wrecked? Did he come up here?" "Yes, he thought that he was on the mainland. He tried to reach the settlement this way. But there isn’t time to tell the story here." He turned and led the way quickly back to the horses, and they mounted and rode on through the wood. At the foot of the final pitch they left the horses and pushed up over shelving rock to the bald summit. The sun was low in the west and the light touched the houses of a little seaport, eastward on the mainland; and above the craggy heights that overtopped the town a snow mountain caught the glory. Far southward the crown of Rainier seemed to rise like an opal island straight out of the shining sea. Suddenly Stratton laid his hand on her arm. "Wait," he said, "this is the end. The summit breaks there, a sheer drop of a thousand feet, with a lake below. "You know," she said. "You’ve been here before?" "It is plain enough. Look down." She looked; but she was obliged to creep another step and drop to her knees before she saw the lake, far, far below, tucked like a great sapphire in a high pocket of the mountain. "Oh," she said, "it seems fathoms deep; and there isn’t a lasting snowfield on this mountain. What feeds it?"