The sound of the chopping ceases, and a great stillness broods on the mountain. Evidently the chopper has sought shelter from the rain. Brown leaves begin to show where the snow has disappeared on the path, so familiar to the feet of the wanderer that no sound should be needed to toll him home. But to-day, while his feet are on the mountain-top, his aching heart is in the valley. She has gone forever from the arms of the lover she never saw. He sees before him the wedding of yesterday, and in his gentleness he is incapable of hating even his successful rival. He is capable only of grief. Bitter tears fall on his breast and on his clasped hands. A great aching is in his throat, and a dimness in his suffused eyes. He throws his arms out and presses his temples with his clenched hands, and mutters with a choking sound, as he walks. He does not know that the rain is falling on his upturned face. He turns to go back. He changes his mind and advances. He is no longer in the path. He has no thought of where he goes. The blades of dead grass, and the dry seeds and fragments of leaves, cling thick upon the sodden surface of his tattered boots. He strides on absently over the ground, parting the fog and cooling his feverish face in the rain; and every step leads him nearer to the boulder face of the mountain where the great avalanches are getting ready to fall a thousand feet into the Cove below.
The events of yesterday go before him. He sees the procession come out of the church house, the women in one group and the men following in another, and he and she going hand in hand in the advance. He feels the sunshine of yesterday on his head and the misery in his heart.
Then it is night, and he sees the lights of the frolic at the cabin in the clearing. He is no longer the cheerful, happy Philip of other years, but a weakened, distracted shadow of that other Philip staggering on through the rain.
He has forgotten his soldier comrades and the meaning of his life on the mountain. He has forgotten even his patriotism and the existence of the flag with thirty-three stars. Sherman Territory is receding under his feet, and the grief that he has created for himself so industriously and nursed so patiently is leading him on.
A blotch of shadows to the right assumes the ghostly form of spreading trees, the naked branches blending softly in the blanket of the fog. The gnarled chestnuts, that looked like berry-bushes while they waited at the deserted cabin on that first night for the moon to go down, give no voice of warning, and Philip comes steadily on, with the telescope strapped to his back and the load in his heart. Under his heedless feet the dead weeds and the sodden leaves give way to the slippery rock.
PHILIP ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE.
For a moment the slender figure crossed by the telescope is massed against the mist overhanging the Cove. Then there is a despairing cry and a futile clutching at the cruel ledge, and, in the silence that follows, the vertical rain, out of the blanket of the fog, goes on shivering its tiny lances on the slippery rocks.