But it was toilsome work. The mountain became steeper, the growth thicker, his load of fish weighed him down. He was almost tempted to retrace his way up the river and brook to the trail, but was loath to consume such an amount of time when it seemed possible to reach the peak by a direct course. Then it became darker in the woods, and the bushes seemed damp with moisture. He wondered if he was entering a fog that had gathered on the mountain top, and, once there, if he could find what he sought. Only the big fish, swinging at his side and dragging in the leaves as he crept through underbrush, gave him comfort in what was rapidly becoming an unpleasant and difficult undertaking. Presently he was reduced to climbing hand over hand, clinging to bushes and bracing his feet as best he might. All at once, he was face to face with a cliff which rose sheer for sixty feet or more and which it seemed impossible to ascend. He followed it for a distance and came at last to where a heavy vine dropped from above, and this made a sort of ladder, by which, after a great deal of clinging and scrambling, he managed to reach the upper level, where he dropped down to catch breath, only to find, when he came to look for his big fish, that somehow in the upward struggle it had broken loose from the basket and was gone. It was most disheartening.
"If I were not a man I would cry," he said, wearily—then peering over the cliff he was overjoyed to see the lost fish hanging not far below, suspended by the willow loop he had made.
So then he climbed down carefully and secured it, and struggled back again, this time almost faint with weariness, but happy in regaining his treasure. And now he realized that a fog was indeed upon the mountain. At the foot of the cliff and farther down the air seemed clear enough, but above him objects only a few feet distant were lost in a white mist, while here and there a drop as of rain struck in the leaves. It would not do to waste time. A storm might be gathering, and a tempest, or even a chill rain on the top of McIntyre was something to be avoided. He rose, and climbing, stooping, crawling, struggled toward the mountain-top. The timber became smaller, the tangle closer, the white mist thickened. Often he paused from sheer exhaustion. Once he thought he heard some one call. But listening there came only silence, and staggering to his feet he struggled on.
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT CAME OUT OF THE MIST
It was several hours after Frank Weatherby had set out on the McIntyre trail—when the sun had risen to a point where it came mottling through the tree-tops and dried the vines and bushes along the fragrant, yielding path below—that a girl came following in the way which led up the mountain top. She wore a stout outing costume—short skirt and blouse, heavy boots, and an old felt school hat pinned firmly to luxuriant dark hair. On her arm she carried the basket of many wanderings, and her step was that of health and strength and purpose. One watching Constance Deane unawares—noting her carriage and sureness of foot, the easy grace with which she overcame the various obstructions in her path—might have said that she belonged by right to these woods, was a part of them, and one might have added that she was a perfect flowering of this splendid forest.
On the evening before, she had inquired of Robin the precise entrance to the McIntyre trail, and with his general directions she had no hesitation now in setting out on her own account to make the climb which would bring her to the coveted specimens at the mountain top. She would secure them with the aid of no one and so give Frank an exhibition of her independence, and perhaps impress him a little with his own lack of ambition and energy. She had avoided the Lodge, making her way around the lake to the trail, and had left no definite word at home as to her destination, for it was quite certain that Mrs. Deane would worry if it became known that Constance had set off up the mountain alone. Yet she felt thoroughly equal to the undertaking. In her basket she carried some sandwiches, and she had no doubt of being able to return to the Lodge during the afternoon, where she had a certain half-formed idea of finding Frank disconsolately waiting—a rather comforting—even if pathetic—picture of humiliation.
Constance did not linger at the trout-brook which had enticed Frank from the narrow upward path, save to dip up a cold drink with the little cup she carried, and to rest up a moment and watch the leaping water as it foamed and sang down the natural stairway which led from one mystery in the dark vistas above to another mystery and wider vistas below—somehow, at last, to reach that deeper and vaster and more impenetrable mystery—the sea. She recalled some old German lines beginning, "Du Bachlein, silberhell und klar," and then she remembered having once recited them to Frank, and how he had repeated them in an English translation:
"Thou brooklet, silver-bright and clear—
Forever passing—always here—
Upon thy brink I sit, and think
Whence comest thou? Whence goest thou?"