Twilight is brief on the summit of the Black. A hundred miles or more away— behind the far peaks and passes of the Tennessee mountains—the sun sinks in a bed of glory, and the last rim of his disk has scarcely disappeared before a soft mantle of darkness falls over us. Then we remember that there is a full moon, and we turn toward the east. Yes, she is coming! There is a glow along the horizon, out of which a yellow shoulder presently appears, and, before the crimson light has faded out of the distant west, the “silver sister-world” has mounted into the blue depths of the eastern sky, and her light streams on the deep chasms and high peaks of the great mountain, with its dark plumage of firs. Wrapped closely in heavy shawls—for the air is sharply cold—we sit and watch this beauty deepen as dusk gives place to night. Over the immense expanse spread below—from Virginia to Georgia, from Tennessee to South Carolina—a white glamour lies, showing the dim outlines of countless mountains, the dark shadows of unnumbered valleys, and deepening to silver mist where the remote landscape meets the arching sky. Around us this radiance has almost the brightness of day, so rarefied is the air, while the mica—which enters largely into the composition of all the rocks and even of the soil on the surface of the peak—sparkles in the light like precious stones. So brilliantly white is all around, so dark the firs sweeping downward below, so far-stretching and mysterious the immeasurably distant view, that words are hushed on our lips. We are thrilled by the greatness of the silent scene, by the solemnity of the glorious night. To be on this lonely mountain-top, uplifted so high above the world, fills us with a sense of exaltation and awe. “How still, how vast, how beautiful!” says Sylvia, in a low voice. “How strange to think of the thousands of people scattered below us, going their accustomed social or domestic ways, while we sit here, midway between heaven and earth—alone with the mountains and the moon!” “And each other,” says Mr. Lanier. “Pray don’t forget that.” “I should like to forget it,” she answers, gazing far away over the broken expanse of distant country with something wistful in the expression of her face as the moon shines on it. “I should like to be here entirely alone—for once. It would be something one could never forget.” “I should think not, indeed,” says Mrs. Cardigan, with a shudder. “It would be something to set one crazy with fright. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen; but there is something terrible in its loneliness. Listen! What eerie sound is that?” “Only the wind sighing among the balsam-trees,” answers Charley. “I wish we could hear the cry of a wild-cat. That _does_ sound eerie when one is in the woods at night.” “I wish a bear would walk out of those firs,” says Sylvia. “Oh, why will nothing ever happen? It seems that our journeyings are doomed to be lamentably tame.”