“Look yonder,” he said.
Carroll looked and started. They stood in a rocky gateway with a river brawling down the chasm beneath them; but a valley opened up in front. Filled with sombre forest, it ran back almost straight between stupendous walls of hills.
“It answers Hartley’s description,” he said. “After all, I don’t think it’s extraordinary we should have taken so much trouble to push on past the right place.”
“How’s that?” Vane demanded.
Carroll sat down and filled his pipe. “It’s the natural result of possessing a temperament like yours. Somehow, you’ve got it firmly fixed into your mind that everything worth doing must be hard.”
“I’ve generally found it so.”
“I think,” said Carroll, grinning, “you’ve generally made it so. There’s a marked difference between the two. If any means of doing a thing looks easy, you at once conclude it can’t be the right way, which is a mode of reasoning that has never convinced me. In my opinion, it’s more sensible to try the easiest method first.”
“As a rule, that leads to your having to fall back upon the other one; and a frontal attack on a difficulty’s often quicker than considering how you can work round its flank. In this case I’ll own we have wasted a lot of time and taken a good deal of trouble that might have been avoided. But are you going to sit here and smoke?”
“Until I’ve finished my pipe,” Carroll answered. “I expect we’ll find tobacco, among other things, getting pretty scarce before this expedition ends.”
He carried out his intention, and they afterwards pushed on up the valley during the rest of the day. It grew more level as they proceeded, and in spite of the frost, which bound the feeding snows, there was a steady flow of water down the river, which was free from rocky barriers. Vane, who now and then glanced at the latter attentively, stopped when dusk was drawing near, and fixed his gaze on the long ranks of trees that stretched away in front of him; fretted spires of sombre greenery lifted high above a colonnade of mighty trunks.