woods, or creeping like an actual exhalation of the soil, blinded
them so that at times they lost the trail completely. At other
times, from the intense heat, it seemed as if they were momentarily
impinging upon the burning area, or were being caught in a closing
circle. It was remarkable that with his sudden accession of
fortune Key seemed to lose his usual frank and careless
fearlessness, and impatiently questioned his companion's woodcraft.
There were intervals when he regretted his haste to reach Skinner's
by this shorter cut, and began to bitterly attribute it to his
desire to serve Collinson. Ah, yes! it would be fine indeed, if
just as he were about to clutch the prize he should be sacrificed
through the ignorance and stupidity of this heavy-handed moralist
at his side! But it was not until, through that moralist's
guidance, they climbed a steep acclivity to a second ridge, and
were comparatively safe, that he began to feel ashamed of his surly
silence or surlier interruptions. And Collinson, either through
his unconquerable patience, or possibly in a fit of his usual
uxorious abstraction, appeared to take no notice of it.

A sloping table-land of weather-beaten boulders now effectually
separated them from the fire on the lower ridge. They presently
began to descend on the further side of the crest, and at last
dropped upon a wagon-road, and the first track of wheels that Key
had seen for a fortnight. Rude as it was, it seemed to him the
highway to fortune, for he knew that it passed Skinner's and then
joined the great stage-road to Marysville,--now his ultimate
destination. A few rods further on they came in view of Skinner's,
lying like a dingy forgotten winter snowdrift on the mountain
shelf.