Her eyes were bits of the sky, and the soft flush that came and went in her cheeks was like a wild mountain flower. The girl was good to look upon as she stood in the doorway, the sunshine on her golden hair that curled into a thousand ripples and caught the gleams of light until she looked like a piece of the morning herself. Peace and contentment fled when they returned terror and dismay remained. Peace and contentment came into Fraley’s life only when the men of the household were gone somewhere into the world. It was the one spot in all the glorious panorama that spoiled the picture if she let herself see it, not only because of that terrible memory but also because it was the way the men of the household came and went to and from the far-off world. She always had to suppress a little shudder as she glanced past the ominous, yawning cavern that crept, it seemed to her sensitive gaze, nearer and nearer to the trail each month. It was the way to the settlement, miles beyond, the trail that led past a sheer precipice where her father had fallen to his death five months before. There was one place, off to the right, where her eyes never lingered. Her glance swept every familiar point in the landscape, from the dim purple mountains in the distance, as far as the eye could reach, with the highlight of snow on the peaks, to the nearer ones, gaunt with rocks or furred with the tender green of the trees then down to the foothills and the valley below. She gave a little wistful sigh, her heart swelling with longing and joy in the beauty and a wish that life were all like that beauty spread out so wondrously before her.įor a moment, she reveled in the spring tints of the foliage-the tender buds of the trees like dots of coral over their tops, the pale green of the little new leaves, the deep darkness of the stalwart pines that seemed like great plumy backgrounds for the more delicate tracery of the other trees that were getting their new season’s foliage. The peace of the morning was shining on them, and the world looked clean and newly made after the storm of the night before. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.įraley MacPherson stood in the open door of the cabin, looking out across the mountains. Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and rights reserved.

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