More than once Mrs. Abbott had to pause.  Midway she was tempted by a singular resting-place.  It was a larch tree, perhaps thirty feet high; at the beginning of its growth, the stem had by some natural means been so diverted as to grow horizontally for a yard or more at a couple of feet above the ground; it had then made a curve downwards, and finally, by way of a perfect loop across itself, had shot again in the true direction, growing at last, with straight and noble trunk, like its undistorted neighbours.  Much wondering at so strange a deformity, Mrs Abbott seated herself on the level portion, and Harvey, as he stood before her, told a fancy that had come to him when for the first time he chanced to climb this way.  Might not the tree represent some human life?  A weak, dubious, all but hopeless beginning; a check; a return upon itself; a laboured circling; last a healthful maturity, upright, triumphing.  He spoke with his eyes on the ground.  Raising them at the end, he was astonished to see that his companion had flushed deeply; and only then it occurred to him that this parable might be applied by the hearer to herself.

‘To make a confession,’ he added at once, ’it forcibly reminded me of my own life —­ except that I can’t pretend to be “triumphing".’

His laugh did not cover the embarrassment with which he discovered that, if anything, he had made matters worse.  Here was an instance of his incorrigible want of tact; much better to have offered no application of the fable at all, and to have turned the talk.  He had told a simple truth, but with the result of appearing to glorify himself, and possibly at his friend’s expense.  Vexed beyond measure, he crushed his heel into the soft ground.

‘That is a very striking thought,’ said Mary Abbott, her look still downcast.  ‘I shall never forget it.’

And she rose to move onward.  They climbed in silence, the flank of the mountain growing steeper.

‘I should have brought you my old alpenstock,’ jested Harvey.  ’Go slowly; we have plenty of time.’

‘I like to exert myself.  I feel so well, and it does me good!’

He ventured to look at her again.  All her confusion had passed away; she had the light of enjoyment in her eyes, and returned his look with a frankness hitherto lacking.

‘You must stay a second week.  Alma won’t let you go.’

’Go, I must.  The two children can’t be left longer at Mrs. Langland’s —­ it would be presuming upon her kindness.’

’I want to talk about them, but one hasn’t much breath here.  When we get to the top ——­’

Last of all came a slippery scramble on broken stones, to where a shapeless cairn rose above tree-tops, bare to the dazzling sky.  As they issued from the shelter of the wood, a breeze buffeted about them, but only for a moment; then the air grew still, and nothing was audible but a soft whispering among the boughs below.  The larches circling this stony height could not grow to their full stature; beaten, riven, stunted, by fierce blasts from mountain or from wave, their trunks were laden, and their branches thickly matted, with lichen so long and hoary that it gave them an aspect of age incalculable.  Harvey always looked upon them with reverence, if not with awe.