Looking over the edge of the plateau, they discovered a party of about a dozen people, in a wagon drawn by six horses, who had stopped to listen to the music, and give their panting animals a chance to rest. Behind them was a line of three or four pack mules, laden with tents, cooking utensils and bedding.
“A camping party!” exclaimed Lyle, “the first of the season; they are on their way to Strawberry gulch.”
On catching sight of the group above on the plateau, the ladies below began waving their handkerchiefs, and the gentlemen were loud in their cheers and calls for more music.
“Give them another song, Miss Maverick,” said Rutherford, “that is a decided encore.”
Once more raising her violin, Lyle sang “The Maid of Dundee,” and never did song or singer meet with nobler applause, for the cheers from below in the canyon were joined with those from above on the plateau, and were echoed and re-echoed among the rocks, the last reverberations dying away and mingling with the roar of the distant cascades.
As the camping party seemed in no haste to continue their journey, Miss Gladden with the gentlemen then came forward to the edge of the plateau, and all joined in singing a few familiar songs, some of them accompanied by the guitar and the violin, after which, the party in the canyon, with much waving of hats and handkerchiefs, and many cheers in token of their appreciation, passed on their way.
After this little episode, a gypsy fire was kindled, and in a short time the rock table was spread with a dainty feast; chicken sandwiches, mountain trout, which Lyle had caught in the morning, delicately broiled, and the sweet, wild strawberries served in various ways, all equally tempting and delicious. After the feast, Houston proved himself an adept upon the violin, and he and Rutherford gave a number of college songs, and old plantation songs and dances, accompanied by the violin and banjo.
At last, as the long, gray twilight was slowly deepening, and the stars silently marshaling their forces in the evening sky, the two boats drifted across the lake, only guided, not propelled, by the oars, and the air, for a while, was filled with song. As they slowly approached the shore, however, the singing gradually ceased. For a while Rutherford talked of the coming of his brother; then he and Lyle were silent, but from the other boat, at a little distance, came low, murmuring tones. They had just entered upon the first pages of that beautiful story, old as eternity itself, and as enduring; the only one of earth’s stories upon whose closing page, as we gaze with eyes dim with the approaching shadows of death, we find no “finis” written, for it is to be continued in the shadowless life beyond.
Rutherford was thinking of some one far away, under European skies, and wishing that she were present with him there, to make his happiness complete.
And Lyle, with that face of wondrous beauty, yet calm and inscrutable as that of the sphinx, had any power as yet passed over the hidden depths of her woman’s nature, and troubled the waters? Were those eyes, with their far-away look, gazing into the past with its strange darkness and mystery, or striving to pierce the dim, impenetrable veil of the future? No one could say; perhaps she herself was scarcely conscious, but as they landed, Miss Gladden noted the new expression dawning in her eyes, and as the friends and lovers separated for the night, each one avowing that day to have been one of the most delightful of their whole lives, she wound her arm about Lyle in sisterly fashion, and drew her into her own room. Lyle, as was her custom, dropped upon a low seat beside her friend, but was silent.