That's where I made my first gain." "Where is the valley ?" "Thirty miles away to the northwest,--up there among the mountains.

It is a great deal higher than this, and such a lovely peaceful place.

I hope you'll go there." "We shall, of course, if Phil needs it; but I like St.Helen's so much that I would rather stay here if we can." Dinner was now announced, and Mrs.Hope led the way into a pretty room hung with engravings and old plates after the modern fashion, where a white-spread table stood decorated with wild-flowers, candle-sticks with little red-shaded tapers, and a pyramid of plums and apricots.

There was the usual succession of soup and fish and roast and salad which one looks for at a dinner on the sea-level, winding up with ice-cream of a highly civilized description, but Clover could scarcely eat for wondering how all these things had come there so soon, so very soon.

It seemed like magic,--one minute the solemn peaks and passes, the prairie-dogs and the thorny plain, the next all these portieres and rugs and etchings and down pillows and pretty devices in glass and china, as if some enchanter's wand had tapped the wilderness, and hey, presto! modern civilization had sprung up like Jonah's gourd all in a minute, or like the palace which Aladdin summoned into being in a single night for the occupation of the Princess of China, by the rubbing of his wonderful lamp.