"With the help of God I'll keep it so, too!" he cried. "I'm ready for the fight now. Let it come."
He knew instinctively that it was coming. He felt it in every word that had fallen from Nan's lips since they left on this trip. He felt it most keenly of all when she was silent, read it in the tremour of her mouth, the shadowy tenderness of her eyes, the low, deep tones of her voice. What he couldn't know was how hard that fight was going to be!
Both Nan and the youngsters slept like children until nine o'clock. He helped the guides prepare breakfast without waking the sleepers and called them at nine.
By ten o'clock breakfast was over, the guides had formed two exploring parties and set out with the young people chattering and laughing. "We'll keep house, Jim, here in God's palace among the clouds, until they return."
"Yes," he answered, cheerily, "and it will be fun to keep it alone, won't it, with no restraints or studied pretense, no crowd of fools or liveried flunkies near at hand; only these big dark balsams for sentinels."
They sat down on the ledge of rock which formed their cave-house and gazed over the marvellous panorama of a world transformed into blue billowy mountains, flying clouds and turquoise skies. Over it all brooded the deep solemn silence of eternity. Not a sound reached the ear from earth or air. Far up in the sky an eagle poised and looked below in silence. Not a house could be seen as far as the eye could reach; only here and there a white patch on the dark blue mountain-side showed like a farmer's scar that hadn't healed. These were the fields of farmers on the lower ranges, but their houses were hidden among the trees.
Nan was leaning back on her elbow on the blanket Stuart had spread for her, watching his face change its mood with each flying cloud.
"Our luck is wonderful to-day, Nan," he said at last. "The guides say this is one of the rarest days a traveller ever finds on this peak. We might come a hundred times and never strike it again."
"Why?" she asked lazily.
"The air's so crisp and clear. A mountain fifty miles away seems a stone's throw. We've but to sweep the horizon with a single turn of the head and see six states of the Union. Eastward stretches North Carolina, to the coast, to the north there in that bristling line of lower hills stands old Virginia. To the west loom the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky and southward rise the crags of western Georgia and South Carolina—but it don't seem so wonderful to you, I suppose."