"I?" He turned to her with his smile of the eyes. "Why, I was in the caboose. The coupling broke and separated the rest of the train from the engine. It was the closest shave I ever had."
"And you never told me."
"The greatest devastator is the frost," he said after a moment. "It drives the wedge ready for the heavy rains. But I remember a place on the Snoqualmie that has been crossed by an avalanche of snow. It has left a clean-swept track through the timber, and the trees, hurled with incredible force, block the river from bank to bank. It's the most terrible jam ever heard of. You know the place, Eben?"
But the settler answered only with a gentle nod. He sat with his chin on his breast, holding his empty pipe on his knee. Martha nudged him, but he slept placidly on.
Alice lifted her glance once more to the shadowy slope. Presently she began to sing in a sweet undertone, "The Day Is Done." And after the first measure Forrest took up the song, and the two voices, rising, swelling, started a refrain from cliff and spur. The last echo drifted and died in a far canyon. A great hush rested on the wilderness. There was a soft illumination on a high peak, then every crest and shoulder was silvered by the rising moon.
The song was followed by many; the parts of old operas which they had been accustomed to sing with her sister and Philip, on winter evenings in Judge Kingsley's parlor, or in summer time becalmed aboard the Phantom. And at last it was Schubert's "Serenade."
Forrest rose to his feet and stood with his arms resting on the top of the trunk behind her. This song had always been a favorite; they sang it well together. But a new personality crept into the familiar tones; an awakened sadness. And the romance of the place, the mystery of night and the near heavens, gave setting to his part and spoke for him.
She took up the song, but it became suddenly, for the first time, too difficult to sing. Her notes faltered and broke. He finished the part alone.
CHAPTER IV
"THER BIGGEST COWARD IN THER WOODS"