I.

IN the semblance of the cumuluscloud from which it takes its name, charged with the portent of the storm, the massive peak of Thunderhead towers preeminent among the summits of the Great Smoky Mountains, unique, impressive, most subtly significant.

What strange attraction of the earth laid hold on this vagrant cloud-form? What unexplained permanence of destiny solidified it and fixed it forever in the foundations of the range?

Kindred thunderheads of the air lift above the horizon, lure, loiter, lean on its shoulder with similitudes and contrasts. Then with all the buoyant liberties of cloudage they rise,-rise!

Alas! the earth clasps its knees; the mountains twine their arms about it; hoarded ores of specious values weigh it down. It cannot soar! Only the cumbrous image of an ethereal thing! Only the ineffective wish vainly fashioned like the winged aspiration!

It may have said naught of this to Ben Doaks, but it exerted strenuous fascinations on the sense alert to them. Always he turned his eyes toward Thunderhead, as he came and went among his cattle on the neighboring heights of Piomingo Bald, a few miles distant to the northeast. Often he left the herder's cabin in the woods below, and sat

for hours on a rock on the summit, smoking his pipe and idly watching the varying aspects of the great peak. Sometimes it was purple against the azure heavens; or gray and sharp of outline on faint green spaces of the sky; or misty, immaterial, beset with clouds, as if the clans had gathered to claim the changeling.

"Pears-like ter me ez I couldn't herd cattle along of a mo' low-sperited, say-nuthin' critter 'n ye be, Ben," his partner said one day, sauntering up the slope and joining him on the summit. "Ye jes' set up hyar on the bald an' gape at Thunderhead like ez ef ye war bereft. Now, down in the cove ye always air toler❜ble good company, — nimble-tongued ez ennybody."

He thrust his cob-pipe into his mouth and pulled away silently at it, gazing at the smoke as it curled up with delicate sinuosity and transparently blue.

Ben Doaks did not reply at once. There was no need of haste on Piomingo Bald.

"Waal, I dunno but it air a sorter lonesome place, an' a-body don't feel much like talkin' no-ways," he drawled at last. "But ye'll git used ter it, Mink," he added, in leisurely encouragement. "Ye'll git used ter it, arter a while."

Mink looked down disconsolately at the vast array of mountains below him on every side. The nearest were all

tinged with a dusky purple, except for the occasional bare, garnet - colored stretches of the "fire-scalds," relics of the desolation when the woods were burned in the autumn; the varying tints were sublimated to blue in the distance; then through every charmed gradation of ethereal azure the ranges faded into the invisible spaces that we wot not of. There was something strangely overwhelming in the stupendous expanse of the landscape. It abashed the widest liberties of fancy. Somehow it disconcerted all past experience, all previous prejudice, all credence in other conditions of life. The fact was visibly presented to the eye that the world is made of mountains.

That finite quality of the mind, aptly expressing itself in mensuration, might find a certain relief in taking note of the curious" bald" itself, - seeming some seventy or eighty bare acres on the summit. Wild grass grows upon its gradual slope; clumps of huckleberry bushes appear here and there; occasional ledges of rock crop out. A hardy flower will turn a smiling face responsive to the measured patronage of the chilly sunshine in this rare air. The solemnity of the silence is broken only by the tinkling of cow-bells, faint, far, from the herds of cattle among the woods lower down on the mountain side.

"I never kin git used ter it," said Mink, desperately. "I never kin git used ter hevin' sech dumbness about me, an' seein' the time go so slow. 'Pears ter me some fower or five hunderd year sence we eat bre'kfus, - an' I ain't hongry, nuther."

He was a tall, singularly lithe man of twenty four or five, clad in a suit of brown jeans. He wore his coat closely buttoned over his blue-checked cotton shirt, for the August days are chilly on Piomingo Bald. His broad-brimmed white wool hat was thrust back on his head, showing his tousled auburn hair

that hung down upon his collar, curling like a cavalier's. He had a keen, clear profile, a quickly glancing, restless dark eye, and his complexion was tanned to a rich tint that comported well with the out-door suggestions of his powder-horn and belt and shot-pouch, which he wore, although his rifle was at the cabin. He maintained the stolid gravity characteristic of the mountaineer, but there was a covert alertness about him, a certain sharpness of attention almost inimical, and slow and dawdling as he was he gave the impression of being endowed with many an agile unclassified mental faculty.

His eyes followed the flight of a bird soaring in great circles high above the "bald," sometimes balanced motionless in mid-air, a pose of ineffable strength and buoyancy, then majestically circling as before.

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That thar buzzard 'pears ter be a-loungin' around in the sky, a-waitin' fur we-uns ter die," he said, lugubriously.

Doaks broke with an effort from his reverie, and turned his languid gaze on the malcontent herder.

"In the name o' heaven, Mink Lorey," he said solemnly, "what is it ye do like ter do?"

Despite the spark of irritation in his eye, he seemed colorless, especially as contrasted with his comrade. He had a shock of fair hair and a light brown beard; the complexion which is the complement of this type had freckled in its exposure to the sun instead of tanning, and added its original pallor to the negative effect. He had good features, inconsequent in their lack of any marked peculiarity except for the honest, candid look in the serious gray eye. He too wore a broad white wool hat and a suit of brown jeans.

Mink gazed at his companion with an expression of brightening interest. He found himself and his own idiosyncrasies, even when berated, more agreeable to contemplate than the mountains.