"If you want to go, child, never mind the work," Mrs. Thorn encouraged in her soft, even voice. "There isn't enough to bother any one." "Perhaps Mr. Thorn will go, too." Rod dropped his creel and vanished out the back door in search of the head of the house. Mrs. Thorn looked down on her daughter's brown head. She was a tall woman, with more than a vestige of good looks, a certain grace of carriage. Her skin was fresh, unwrinkled. Her voice had a pleasant, throaty tone. An odd expression flitted across her face now, and Mary, glancing up, caught it; a wordless, sympathetic understanding. She rose on tiptoe to kiss her mother's cheek. "Run on. Vacation will end soon enough. I don't suppose your father will go," Mrs. Thorn said. "Better put up a lunch. The chances are Rod didn't think of that." "I thought of it," Rod came back in time to overhear, "but there was no time. I had to make a get-away." "Playing hooky?" Mrs. Thorn teased. "Yes. From our honored guests. They can't do anything without being personally conducted. And as it isn't my show, I'd rather let some one else do the conducting." In ten minutes they were swinging uphill from the narrows, on a path that rose steeply through heavy timber, turning aside here and there for great trees. They moved silently, saving their breath for the climb. High overhead rifts of blue sky showed through interlocked branches. Dew still clung to the bordering thickets. They walked in cool shadow, on ground the sun never touched except in narrow shafts because of that canopy of leaf and bough. They bore on up until they came out on a height of land bare of timber, where only moss carpeted the granite ridge. On their right Little Dent and Big Dent and the twin Gillards lay like dusky green blobs in the shining race of the tide. The red roof of Hawk's Nest was a flaming dot against paler green. The channel below was a still paler shade. The mainland receded to height after height, mountain after mountain, the farther peaks faint blue cones on a ragged horizon. "What a look. Air's clear as crystal this morning." Mary nodded. They walked a hundred yards along the open backbone. To the left blue-black water mirroring the shore trees, the distant hills, walled on three sides with bold, ravine-split cliffs, gleamed in a deep hollow. They plunged downward through dense thickets. The patch discovered itself anew to their hurrying feet. In ten minutes, panting a little with the speed of their descent, they stood on a rock shelf thrusting into the Granite Pool, a little lake hidden in the Valdez hills. There was neither inlet nor outlet. It was half a mile broad, mysteriously fed by hidden springs, full of cutthroat trout rarely disturbed in their aqueous heaven.