wonderful eyes, and was, I believe, dressed in a garment whose colour
was pink.

"Keep yore moccasins greased," Old Mizzou advised at parting; by which
he meant that the young man was to step softly.

This he found to be difficult. His course lay along the top of the
ridge where the obstructions were many. There were outcrops, boulders,
ravines, broken twigs, old leaves, and dikes, all of which had to be
surmounted or avoided. They were all aggravating, but the dikes
possessed some intellectual interest which the others lacked.

A dike, be it understood, is a hole in the earth made visible. That is
to say, in old days, when mountains were much loftier than they are
now, various agencies brought it to pass that they split and cracked
and yawned down to the innermost cores of their being in such hideous
fashion that chasms and holes of great depth and perpendicularity were
opened in them. Thereupon the interior fires were released, and these,
vomiting up a vast supply of molten material, filled said chasms and
holes to the very brim. The molten material cooled into fire-hardened
rock. The rains descended and the snows melted. Under their erosive
influence the original mountains were cut down somewhat, but the
erstwhile molten material, being, as we have said, fire-hardened,
wasted very little, or not at all, and, as a consequence, stands forth
above its present surroundings in exact mould of the ancient cracks or
holes.

Now, some dikes are long and narrow, others are short and wide, and
still others are nearly round. All, however, are highest points, and,
head and shoulders above the trees, look abroad over the land.