"I've met him," said Bennington shortly.
"Now you must go," she commanded, after a pause. "I want to stay here for a while." "No," as he opened his mouth to object. "I mean it! Please be good!"
After he had gone she sat still until sundown. Once she shook her shoulders impatiently. "It is silly!" she assured herself. As before, the shadow of Harney crept out to the horizon's edge. There it stopped. Twilight fell.
"No Spirit Mountain to-night," she murmured wistfully at last. "Almost do I believe in the old legend."
CHAPTER VIII
AN ADVENTURE IN THE NIGHT
After supper that night Bennington found himself unaccountably alone in camp. Old Mizzou had wandered off up the gulch. Arthur had wandered off down the gulch. The woman had locked herself in her cabin.
So, having nothing else to do, he got out the manuscript of Aliris: A Romance of all Time, and read it through carefully from the beginning. To his surprise he found it very poor. Its language was felicitous in some spots, but stilted in most; the erudition was pedantic, and dragged in by the ears; the action was idiotic; and the proportions were padded until they no longer existed as proportions. He was astounded. He began to see that he had misconceived the whole treatment of it. It would have to be written all over again, with the love story as the ruling motif. He felt very capable of doing the love story. He drew some paper toward him and began to write.