LOOKOUT mountain: 53 



believe that life on a mountain top, in a cot- 

 tage in a grove, would be found every whit 

 as agreeable as my hostess pictured it. 



The rain slackened after a while, though 

 it was long in ceasing altogether, and I went 

 to the nearest railway station (Sunset Sta- 

 tion, I believe) and waited haK an hour for 

 a train to the Point, chatting meanwhile 

 with the young man in charge of the relic- 

 counter. Then, at the Point, I waited again 

 — this time to enjoy the prospect and see 

 how the weather would turn — till a train 

 passed on " the broad gauge " below. Just 

 beyond Fort Cloud it ran into a fine old 

 forest, and a sudden notion took me to go 

 straight down through the woods and spend 

 the rest of the day rambling in that direction. 

 The weather had still a dubious aspect, but, 

 with motive enough, some things can be 

 trusted to Providence, and, the steepness of 

 the descent accelerating my pace, I was soon 

 on the sleepers, after which it was but a little 

 way into the woods. Once there, I quickly 

 forgot everything else at the sound of a new 

 sono". But loas it new ? It bore some re- 

 semblance to the ascending scale of the blue 

 yellow-back, and might be the freak of some 



