The Bushwhackers & Other Stories

Excerpt: One might have imagined that there was some enchantment in the spot which drew hither daily the young mountaineer?s steps. No visible lure it showed. No prosaic reasonable errand he seemed to have. But always at some hour between the early springtide sunrise and the late vernal sunset Hilary Knox climbed the craggy, almost inaccessible steeps to this rocky promontory, that jutted out in a single sharp peak, not only beetling far over the sea of foliage in the wooded valley below, but rising high above the dense forests of the slope of the mountain,[Pg 4] from the summit of which it projected. Here he would stand, shading his eyes with his hand, and gaze far and near over the great landscape. At first he seemed breathless with eager expectation; then earnestly searching lest there should be aught overlooked; at last dully, wistfully dwelling on the scene in the full realization of the pangs of disappointment for the absence of something he fain would see.