There is no phenomenon of weather so swiftly variable as that of mist. It may lie at a given moment on the sea or on the mountain—a clinging, opaque mass, as dense and impenetrable as darkness; darkness, in fact, leeched of its pigment, a strange, hideous, unnatural, pale darkness—and the next moment it may be swept clean away by the wind. This is especially true on high altitudes; the ridges of hills; the exposed shoulders of mountains, where the fog lies clear in the path of the wind. On Western mountain ranges, adjacent to the sea, this protean virtue of the weather is sometimes a thing as instantaneous as sorcery. The soft rain is often followed by a stiff, heady breeze, sucked in landward from the ocean. This breeze travels like a broom sweeping its track. Thus, the Marchesa Soderrelli, wrapped in this mist, like a toy in wool, sitting on the floor of the cabin, believed herself present at some enchantment, when suddenly the mist departed, a cool wind blew in on her, and the sun entered.

She uttered a cry of astonishment, and pointed to the door. A huge, gaunt mule stood directly before the cabin, and almost instantly the tall figure of a man, equally gaunt, loomed in the door.

"Good mornin'," he said, with an awkward, shy bob of the chin. His eyes were gentle; his craggy, rugged feature placid like those of some old child. "I had a right smart trouble to find you."

The tragic nature of a situation is an intangible essence purely mental. It does not lie in any physical aspect; it is a state of the mind. Let that state of the mind change, and the whole atmosphere of the situation changes. The scene may stand in every detail precisely as it was, the actors in it remain the same, Nature and every phase of Nature the same, and yet everything is changed. It is a state of the mind! On the instant, the scene of breaking tension staged in this mountain cabin descended into commonplace. Life, and the promise of life travel always in one zone; death, and the threat of death in another—but shifting imperceptibly, and on the tick of the clock.

One arriving now at this cabin would have marked only signs of fatigue in the aspect of the three persons in it. Of this fatigue, the girl and the older woman gave much less evidence than the man. He seemed wholly exhausted. The vitality of the two women arose with the advent of the mountaineer. They gave interest and aid to his efforts to provide a meager breakfast. He produced from a sack across the mule's saddle a piece of raw bacon, flour and a frying pan.

The Duke of Dorset, after his first welcome to the mountaineer, and his brief explanation to the others, had returned to his seat on the log by the door. He seemed too tired even to follow events. The mountaineer had produced sulphur matches from the inside of his hat—the only dry spot about him—wrapped in a piece of red oilcloth, cut doubtless from the cover of some cabin table. He was now on his knees by the tumbled-in chimney, lighting a fire. Caroline Childers, with the knife, which the Duke had once borrowed, was cutting the bacon into strips. The Marchesa Soderrelli, still seated on the floor, was in conversation with the mountaineer, her strong, resolute nature recovering its poise.

The contrast between the degrees of fatigue manifest in the two women and the man by the door was striking. He looked like a human body from which all the energies of life had been removed. In the case of the two women, Nature was beginning to recover. But, in the aspect of the man, there was no indication that she ever intended to make the effort.

Now, as the effect of mere exertion, this result was excessive. The man was hardy and powerful; he was young; he was accustomed to fatigue. Eight hours of stress would not have brought such a frame to exhaustion. Eight days would hardly have done it. Moreover, within the last hour, the man had entered the clearing with no marked evidence of fatigue. The transformation carried the aspect of sorcery, or that of some obscure and hideous plague, traveling in the mist.

Occult and unknowable, swift and potent are the states of the mind. The blasting liquors, fabled of the Borgia, were not more toxic than certain ones brewed, on occasion, in the vats of the brain.

The Marchesa Soderrelli took over the conduct of affairs. She brought now to the promise of life that same resolution and directness which she had summoned to confront the advent of death. She spoke from her place on the floor, her voice compact and decisive. She estimated with accurate perspective the difficulties at hand, and those likely to arise. Now as determined to go on as she had been a little earlier determined to remain. Her conversation, almost wholly to the mountaineer, was concise, deliberate and to the point. But while she talked directly to him, she looked almost continually at the Duke of Dorset. She seemed to carry on, side by side, two distinct mental processes—one meeting the exigencies of the situation, and the other involving a study of the man seated by the door—and to handle each separately as a thing apart from the other.

The coast could be reached by trails known to the mountaineer in eight or nine hours, perhaps in less time. If they set out at once they would arrive in the afternoon. Nevertheless, the Marchesa Soderrelli, coming to a decision on the two problems before her, declared that they should remain where they were until midday. It is possible that she considered the Duke of Dorset too fatigued to go on; but she gave no reason.

This careful scrutiny of the changed aspect of the man by the door was not confined to the Marchesa Soderrelli. The circuit rider observed it, considered the man's physical needs, and agreed to the delay. Caroline Childers, behind the Marchesa Soderrelli, sitting by the bit of fire, her hands around her knees, also studied the man; but she did not regard him steadily. She sat for the most part, looking into the fire at the cooling embers, at the white ash gathering on the twigs. Now and then, fitfully, at intervals, her eyes turned toward him. The expression of the girl's face changed at such a time. It lifted always with concern and a certain distress, and it fell again, above the fire, into a cast of vague, apparently idle speculation; but, unlike the scrutiny of the other woman, it continued.

The Marchesa having reached a conclusion turned about and began to probe the mountaineer with queries. She wished to know where he had been, how he had come to follow, and by what means he had found them.

The old man was not easily drawn into a story. The history of the night came up under the Marchesa's searching hand in detached fragments. Fragments that amazed and fixed her interest. This story failed to hold the girl's exclusive interest, although absorbing that of the Marchesa. Her eyes traveled continually to the Duke of Dorset while she listened to it as though placing each incident in its proper relation to him. As though each incident, so coupled up, entered in and became a part of some big and overpowering conception that her mind again and again attempted to take hold of. She seemed, unlike the older woman, not able to carry the two things side by side in her mind. She swung from the one abruptly to the other.

The mountaineer, under the searching queries of the Marchesa, was disturbed and apologetic. He had been slow to find the party, he thought; and, as preface to the story, meekly issued his excuse, including a word for the mule.

"Jezebel's a-gittin' on, an' I hain't as spry as I was."

Not as spry as he was! The traveling of this man for the last half of the night would have appalled a timber wolf. He had beat the mountains, on both sides of the river, for four hours, running through the forest. He had gone along the face of the mountains for at least five miles, backward and forward, parallel with the great road, traveling faster than that wolf. He was desolated, too, because "God Almighty" had sent him in haste, like that man of God out of Judah, and he had stopped "to eat bread and to drink water."

Stopped to eat bread and to drink water!

For eight hours the man had not stopped except to feed the mule. For ten hours he had not eaten a mouthful, and had drank only when he waded through a river. Why, since he carried food, he had not eaten, the Marchesa So-derrelli, with all her dredging, could not get at. The man seemed to have had some vague idea that the food would be needed, and an accounting of it required of him. He was distressed for what the mule had eaten, but one must be merciful to his beast, for the Bible said it.

Moreover, he had been "afeard."

Afeard! The man had been all night in the immediate presence of death. He had stood unmoved and observing under the very loom of it. He had crossed again and again under its extended arm, under its descending hand; within a twinkling of the eye, a ticking of the clock of death.

It ought to be remembered that the Marchesa Soderrelli was an experienced and educated woman, skilled in the subtleties of speech, and in deft probing. And yet, with all the arts and tricks of it, she was not clearly able to discover wherein the mountaineer accused himself of fear.

It seemed that the man, following a definite impulse which he believed to be a direction of God, had arrived on the spur of the mountain above the chÂteau before the revolt was on. But here in the deeps of the forest he had stopped to consider what he ought to do, and in this he had been "afeard," not for his life, but to trust God. He should have gone on into the chÂteau, then he might have brought all safely away. But he had "taken thought."

When he heard the cracking of the rifle, he had tied the mule to a tree, and descended the stone steps. But he arrived there after the attack was ended. Concealed by the vines, he had concluded that the occupants of the chÂteau were already gone out on the road to the coast.

He had returned for the mule, made a detour around to the road, and advanced toward the chÂteau. But he found no one. The chÂteau was in flames. He now thought that if any of its occupants had escaped, they would be in the mountain from which he had descended, and would come down the trail to the river. He had, therefore, traveled with the mule as fast as he could to that place on the road. But no one had come over the river there. He could tell that, because one, coming up out of the water, would have made wet tracks on the dry moss of the bank, and the dry carpet of the road.

Now, extremely puzzled, he had hidden the mule in the forest, and set out to see if the escaping persons had crossed the road farther on. He had traveled for several miles, but had found no wet track on the dry road. Then he had crossed the river and followed up on the opposite bank. He had hunted that face of the mountain before the pursuing mob. Finally ascending the bank of the river, he had come by chance on the Marchesa's skirt. This had given him a clew to the direction taken by the party, and following it he had finally located, by the trodden moss, the place where the river had been crossed. He had waded the river there, hoping to follow the wet tracks, but the rain had now begun to descend, and he could not tell what direction they had taken. He had returned for the mule, and followed the road to the summit of the mountain. Here he again tied the mule in the woods and began that long, tireless searching, backward and forward along the whole face of the mountain.

Finally, in despair, he returned to the mule, and as he put it, "left the thing to Jezebel an' God Almighty." And the mule, doubtless remembering, in the uncomfortable rain, the shelter of the abandoned cabin, had gone along the backbone of the mountain into the clearing. And so he had found them.

But to the circuit rider it was God's work; the angel of the Lord in the night, in the impenetrable mist, walking by the beast's bridle. He was depressed and penitent. He had been one of little faith, one of that perverse and headstrong generation; afraid, like the Assyrian, to trust God. And so, in spite of him, they had been found.

The man was so evidently distressed that the Marchesa Soderrelli hastened to reassure him. She told him how the Duke of Dorset had gone twice to a window to kill him. She thought the deep religious nature of the man would see here a providential intervention—the hand of Yahveh thrust out for the preservation of His servant. But in this she was mistaken. He had been in the presence, not of God's mercy, but of His anger. The hand had been reached out, not to preserve, but to dash him into pieces. He believed in the austere God of the ancient Scriptures, who visited the wavering servant with punishments immediate and ruthless; the arrow drawn at a venture and the edge of the sword.

The astonishment of the Marchesa Soderrelli at the man did not equal his astonishment at her. He sat looking at the woman in wonder. How could she doubt a thing so clear? Was not the Bible crowded with the lesson? Presently he arose and went out into the clearing. The gaunt mule was cropping vines in the open before the door. He paused to caress her lovingly with his hands. Then he crossed the clearing and disappeared into the forest. The Marchesa concluded that the man had gone to post himself somewhere as a sentinel, and she composed herself to wait.

The morning was drawing on to midday. The sun lay warm on the forest. The soft haze stretched a blue mist through the hollows of the mountains. The peace, the stillness, the serenity of autumn lay through the cabin. The air was soft. No one in the cabin moved. Caroline Childers sat where she had been, fallen apparently into some vague and listless dreaming. Her hands wandered idly among the leaves, breaking a twig to bits, making now and then a foolish, irrelevant gesture. The Duke sat with his elbow on his knee, and his chin resting in the hollow of his hand. The girl, now and then, looked up at him and then back again to her aimless fingers crumbling the leaves.

A droning as of bees outside arose. It seemed in the intense stillness, to increase, to take on volume. The sound deepened. It became like the far-off humming of a wheel under the foot of a spinner. It drew the attention of the Mar-chesa Soderrelli. She began to listen intently.

"Do you hear that sound, Caroline?" she said, "what is it?"

The girl arose and listened. She went noiselessly to the door, and out into the clearing. She came to the mule, stopped, and began, like the old mountaineer, to stroke its big, kindly face. A breath of wind carried the sound to her from the forest. It was a human voice, rising and falling in a deep muttering cadence.

"I've been in the presence of Thy wrath, O God Almighty, an' the j'ints of my knees are loosened. I hain't like David, the son of Jesse. Uit's Thy hand, O Lord, that skeers me. Preserve me from Thy sword, an' I'll take my chancet with the sword of mine enemies. Fur I'm afeard of Thee, but I hain't afeard of them."

The girl stood a moment, her hand under the mule's muzzle, then she walked slowly back to the cabin. At the door she stopped and answered the Marchesa's question.

"It's the wind," she said, "in the tops of the fir trees."