When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears, and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.
At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.
He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion; yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!
He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility toward me.
"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this "--and made as if to pass me on the inner side.
I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I could only hope he failed to note:
"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you like--here! now!"
He looked at me curiously for an instant--then with a frown. "You are drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"
"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."
The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.