From time to time an enwearied pine bough let fall to the earth its
load of melting snow, and the branch swung back glistening in the
faint wintry sunlight. Down the gulch a brook clattered amid its ice
with the sound of a perpetual breaking of glass. All the forest looked
drenched and forlorn.
The sky-line was a ragged enclosure of gray cliffs and hemlocks and
pines. If one had been miraculously set down in this gulch one could
have imagined easily that the nearest human habitation was hundreds of
miles away, if it were not for an old half-discernible wood-road that
led towards the brook.
"Halt! Who's there?"
This low and gruff cry suddenly dispelled the stillness which lay upon
the lonely gulch, but the hush which followed it seemed even more
profound. The hush endured for some seconds, and then the voice of the
challenger was again raised, this time with a distinctly querulous
note in it.
"Halt! Who's there? Why don't you answer when I holler? Don't you know
you're likely to get shot?"