About mid-afternoon of the next day they set out for Lola’s cabin. It was a longer hike than they thought, judging from the distance they had reckoned where the smoke was curling the previous evening.
Presently a clearing appeared just ahead and, reaching it, they beheld the “cabin” as she called it, but really a little cottage, painted white with green trimmings and embowered in flowers of variegated hue. Truly a veritable little paradise in the heart of the mountains.
So sequestered, so cool and peaceful it stood there, with the brook to one side bubbling its hurried way as its crystal waters glistened and sparkled in the sunlight.
Running back of the cottage to the south, the ground ended abruptly in a jagged ledge of rock that looked down into a deep ravine from its dizzy heights.
“I told Grandmother one time that at least we have the distinction of living on the edge of the world!” Lola had come out of the house quietly and noting their evident abstraction in the awe-inspiring depths of the ravine, she had spoken—their very thoughts.
Unconsciously, Westy had made that deduction. On the edge of the world! Indeed it was, for the formidable-looking chasm with the mountains rising ever higher to the south seemed to separate the little cottage in its realms of imagination from the world of reality beyond!
CHAPTER XI—MANY YEARS AGO
In this everyday world of ours, what with the rapid strides that civilization has taken in every direction and the progress of our own generation, we have become cynical and apathetic regarding the ingenuity of mankind.
This fact was never brought to mind so much as on that Sunday afternoon when Westy got his first glimpse of Lola’s home. It must represent the love and labor of three quarters of a century and more, he thought, to attain such a triumph against such odds. How these sturdy people had outwitted stubborn Nature, to have made this paradise possible in a wilderness, when all the soil surrounding it even now seemed unwilling to give sustenance to anything save a few hardy trees and lifeless mosses. It was astounding and worthy of praise.
A little arbor had been built to one side of the house and it was here that Lola entertained them. At length her grandmother appeared, Lola introducing her as Mrs. Redmond.