Still
smiling, he rose to his feet.
III
On one side he had left the earth yellow with the coming noon, but
it was still morning as he went down on the other side. The laurel
and rhododendron still reeked with dew in the deep, ever-shaded
ravine. The ferns drenched his stirrups, as he brushed through
them, and each dripping tree-top broke the sunlight and let it
drop in tent-like beams through the shimmering undermist. A bird
flashed here and there through the green gloom, but there was no
sound in the air but the footfalls of his horse and the easy
creaking of leather under him, the drip of dew overhead and the
running of water below. Now and then he could see the same slender
foot-prints in the rich loam and he saw them in the sand where the
first tiny brook tinkled across the path from a gloomy ravine.
There the little creature had taken a flying leap across it and,
beyond, he could see the prints no more. He little guessed that
while he halted to let his horse drink, the girl lay on a rock
above him, looking down. She was nearer home now and was less
afraid; so she had slipped from the trail and climbed above it
there to watch him pass.
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