Fifty feet below them the torrent dashed itself into foam in its narrow trough, splashed the rowan trees that overhung it and threatened their brave roots with the reckless water which, white with froth, showed in its smoother places, a brilliance of blue that shamed the sky.
"To live here always!" Edward Webb exclaimed.
But Alexander said nothing more than, "We'll follow the stream when you're rested."
"I'm ready."
They went on, slowly mounting a steep and slippery tongue of land that lay between the white teeth of the torrent and a sister stream. The man's breath came sharply, but he plodded upward.
"The muscles of my legs are feeling it," he confessed. "Not that I want to stop. It does me good. It is more delightful than I can say. Ah!" He sank to a stone as he reached level ground again. "Ah!" He could find no more words, for across a wide stone-strewn space there rose a cliff of black and riven rock. In its grandeur and aloofness it looked immutable, yet the rents in its great sides, this rocky hollow which was the pit into which it flung the fragments time had stolen from it, were proof that even it must suffer change. But it suffered bravely, stoically, lifting a proud and peaceful face to the sky, and now, about its summit, a little filmy cloud had wreathed itself.
Looking at it, Alexander wore an expression between pride of possession and youthful reserve; he lay on his stomach, nibbling a heather stalk, and frowning that he might not smile. This was his mountain, all the mountains were his, and he would have led hither no one whom he could not trust; but Edward Webb's long-drawn sighs, the restless movements of a pleasure that looked and was not able to express itself, and then the settled quiet of his drinking gaze, assured him that he had made no mistake. This man understood that he was in the presence of the mighty. Alexander gave a small, satisfied nod of the head. It was almost a year since he had first seen Edward Webb, and it was Edward Webb who had given him Keats; yet for these ten months he had waited, watching, before he would bring his friend to the holy places. And now he was content: he had not offended his mountain, he had brought it another worshipper.
There was no sound heard in that solitary place but the brawling of the two waters, the occasional cry of a sheep, and the rattle of the stones it dislodged as it picked its way about the scree: than that and the rushing water there was no other movement, except when a rare bird, poised against the blue, flapped strongly, surely, with its powerful wings. With every minute the quiet that was a quality of the mountain gathered and increased. Quietness and courage and endurance—these were the messages heard by Edward Webb, sent to him by that gaunt and perfect example fronting him. These, and something more, for the majestic rock reared against the sky spoke of more than human attributes, craved and approached the Divine.
"It lifts me; I seem to be afloat," he said, careless of the boy, or confident in him. "I wish——"
"No, no!" Alexander looked up. "Don't say it! She wouldn't like it; I know she wouldn't. I won't have her like it."