A quarter of a mile away, on a hog’s-back running parallel to but lower than the height which the girl was traveling, a man was scanning the far slopes through a field glass. The figure darted across the radius of his fixed gaze. With an exclamation he swept the slope until he caught the moving object again. For a moment only he focused on the flashing figure, for it disappeared over the crest and down toward the Santo Spirito canyon. The man rubbed his lens impatiently and looked again. “Am I seeing things?” he grumbled, half amused. “A flying wraith of the mountains? Is it an ice maiden, or what?” After all, who could it be, all alone, way up here in this wilderness? He’d inquire down below. Garen Shepherd, a young irrigation engineer, dug his spiked walking-stick into the treacherous surface and started down the trail—an hour or so, and even the prolonged afterglow, the amazing snow-light, would be gone. He had barely time to get back to the canyon of the Amarillo and Benty’s Lodge, where he was staying. Below, in the canyon of the Santo Spirito, it lacked but three minutes of nightfall. When the dying afterglow reached a certain point the canyon would be suddenly submerged in darkness. Damon O’Neill, the forest ranger of the Coronado slopes, led his mare into the log stable back of his cabin. He blanketed her against a bitter night, so bitter that even the chatter of the Cascada, the noisy stream that flowed at the bottom of the canyon, was sealed up and silenced in a prison of ice. He buckled the straps deftly, patted the sorrel mare’s nose, and went out, closing the door carefully behind him. As he stood on the cabin steps, peering nervously about and gazing where the upper mountain still glowed with light, the white figure for which he was looking emerged from the spruce. With a shout and a few sliding steps the girl reached the cabin just as the canyon was slipping into night. “Dawn! You just made it. Where’ve you been so late?” “Snowshoeing up on the divide, Dad. It was glorious. Don’t worry. I keep my eye on the time.” She was unstrapping her snowshoes, while her father gathered an armful of wood from the pile beside the door. She hung the shoes on a nail against the cabin, opened the door for her father, and followed him inside. In a moment squares of light twinkled out from the cabin windows. All about the little log house fir and pine rose like clustered cathedral spires. All the universe was dark except for the far stars—and for pairs of shining eyes that came and went through the forest. Inside the cabin it was warm and close. Damon kicked the logs smoldering in the wide stone fireplace and threw on light fuel till they blazed high. In a small kitchen adjoining the one big living-room a little cook-stove gave out waves of warmth and the smell of supper, of spruce pitch and resin burning, of wet woolen things drying.