"You are quite right, Captain Hector Coles," said Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Low people, who do not even know how to walk without running over others, should be kept at their proper distance; and of course gentlemen and soldiers like yourself find it not only a duty but a privilege to afford to us ladies that protection."
This time Captain Hector Coles, immensely flattered, bowed round on the other side, to the elder lady.
"Hark!" said Margaret Hayley, in a louder voice than either had before used, and a voice that had a perceptible tremor in it like that of fright.
"What did you hear?" asked the Captain.
"Listen—I want to hear what that man was saying."
"H. T." was speaking, just below.
"No, I have never been here before," he said. "Strangely enough, some of the greatest curiosities of the continent are neglected by just such fools as myself, until too old or too busy or too careworn to enjoy them."
"You speak like a jolly old grandfather, and yet you are scarcely as old as myself," answered the rich, sonorous voice of Halstead Rowan. "Well, that is your business. The White Mountains are no novelty to me, or any other mountains, I believe, North of the Isthmus."
"Is there any thing finer than this, at this moment, among them all?"
"No, and I doubt if there is any thing finer on earth!" was the enthusiastic reply. "And by the way, even I have not happened to see the full moon on the face of the Old Man, before. It is a magnificent sight—a new sensation."