The trail was not only steep and rough, but at the same time slippery with the damp of spring; and the traveller, in that uncertain greyness of earliest dawn, had to pick his way with care. He was nearing the "timberline" after a sharp climb of half a mile from the high but sheltered valley wherein he had made camp the night before. The woods, a monstrous jumble of rocks and trunks, matted shrubs and gnarled, sinister roots which clutched like tentacles for a grip to hold them against the tearing mountain wilds, began to open out before him, and he caught glimpses of the naked mountain face, scarred with tremendous ravines and scrawled across with crooked, dizzy ledges. Far and high, the eternal snows had caught the full flood of the sunrise, and every soaring crag and pinnacle stood bathed in a glory of ineffable pink and saffron.
Merivale stopped, and stood watching, with an impulse to uncover his head, while the transfiguring splendour spread slowly down the steeps.
