They spent two nights in the forest, forging onward throughout the short, cold, crystal days in the same southwesterly direction, up and down, up and down, but always gaining in altitude. They had left the Canadian Zone and were well into the Hudsonian, which constitutes the belt of forest just below timberline. Lodgepole pine, Alpine hemlock, silver pine, and white-bark pine had replaced the Jeffrey pine, red firs and aspens of the life zone immediately below them. They were over eight thousand feet above the sea, Henry told them, when at last, about ten o’clock of the third day after leaving the creek, the woods began to grow thinner, and they encountered frequent patches of short chaparral, bleak and rugged and rock strewn. They were entering the Arctic-Alpine Zone, comprising an elevation of from ten thousand five hundred feet to the tops of the highest peaks. On and on, always climbing higher into an atmosphere more breath-taking, more crystalline. The chilled silences became awesome. Unfamiliar growths presented themselves, stunted, grotesque. An occasional patch of snow was crossed. A snow-white bird as large as a pigeon fluttered down to their camping ground, cocked his head on one side, and surveyed them with comical curiosity. A few grains of rolled barley, left by the wasteful burros, lay on the ground, for a small quantity had been brought along to tempt them back to camp when they wandered, browsing throughout the nights. The white bird pecked contemplatively at these, chattered his bill over one, and dropped it as unfit for avian consumption. As he hopped about, still intent on trying the unfamiliar particles that looked like food, his course took him directly over the foot of Charmian, who was standing very still and watching him. Utterly without fear of these human beings, he hopped upon the toe of her hiking shoe, and from that vantage point lifted his body and gazed about as a robin does for worms. “The dear thing!” breathed the girl. “I guess he’s never before seen a human being, and can’t have any conception of what brutes we are. I wonder if I could pick it up!” “Try it,” urged the doctor softly. Charmian stooped, her hands outspread. The movement caused the bird to hop from her shoe, but it did not make away. The girl stooped lower and lower, outspread fingers on either side of it. Her hands closed in to within six inches of the warm, white body. The bird looked up at her and hopped off sedately, without a sign of fear, but as much as to say, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” “I could have grabbed it, but I wouldn’t!” maintained the widow. “But I _did_ just want to touch it once!” They decided that their visitor was an albino robin, probably a native of the regions above the line of perpetual snow, and that never before had it seen a human being.