By Kibesillah [pp. 540-552]

BY KIBESILLAH.
at a prospect point I found on one of my
tramps, where Mount Kibesillah rises
grandly above. It seems the true incar nation of the everlasting hills. Are you
and Tom ever going to walk there with
me, Cousin Jessie?"
"Tom? You will never get him to
take that amount of useless exertion,
even though he is a Westerner born and
bred. But I will go with you some day
when he gets a lot of new magazines
from the city and will not miss either of
Us. ".
All right, then," said Arthur heartily. "I remember you were always
ready for a tramp in the old days, and I
would rather walk with you than with
any fellow I know - not to speak of the
girls."
"That atones for your rudeness this
evening, and after all, I would n't know
how to take conventional compliments
from you."
She looked at the dark, well built
young man with warm sisterly affection
in her eyes, while he smoked his cigar
with the freedom granted him many
years before when they were girl and boy
together. Arthur Kimbrough was Mrs.
Preston's junior by several years, and
having no sisters of his own, she had
taken the place of one to him during his
schoolboy days. Then she had met and
married Tom Preston and gone out to
California to live; but the old friendship
lived on, and the cousins had never
ceased to correspond. Arthur had been
a moody, taciturn boy, and she had
urged him to mingle in society. He
had obeyed, and had acquired thereby
an ease and grace of manner unknown to
the hobbledehoy whom Jessie Preston
remembered as the most awkward of the
groomsmen at her wedding.
Two months before the August evening at Madrofio Springs he had risen
from a long illness brought on by expo
sure and overwork in a malarial region
where he had gone in the capacity of
civil engineer. Rest and a change of
climate had been urged by the physician,
and his thoughts had turned to his cousin
in California. So he had come out to
visit her, and was now with her and her
husband in the Clear Lake country of
California, a land where, if anywhere on
this earth, "it seemeth always after noon," in the still mountain air that
hardly stirs a leaf on the trees that
sprinkle the yellow slopes. More beautiful, to some eyes, are these summer
tints than the green shimmering of verdure in the spring. The glory of the
May has long since departed from the
land, but every hillside has turned to
pale gold, with here and there a madrofio
or manzanita, set like some giant bloodstone, the dark green of its foliage lightened by the lines of its red-skinned
branches.
Arthur Kimbrough was breathing in
the spirit of the hills, and his whole being
responded to the re-awakening consciousness of his youth and strength.
Kate Hatherton had never outlived her
long convent practise of early rising, and
before six o'clock on the morning after
her coming to Madrolo Springs she had
stolen softly down the uncarpeted stairway, and out into the keen-scented,
dewless morning air. To the left of the
low, rickety hotel building a path
stretched out over a rustic bridge and on
through an enticing vista of manzanita
bushes to the springs that gave the place
its fame. On the slopes above were the
hotel cottages, while on every side the
strength-giving mountains barred out the
world below.
The air was yet chilly with the early
morning, but she was conscious of no discomfort. "How beautiful it all is up
here!" she was saying to herself, with
542