"They're waitin' for us in the cove, not many uv 'em, uv course, but they'll help." "Have we much more riding ?" asked the colonel.

"I don't think the men are suffering, but our horses can't stand it much longer." "Not more'n an hour." They passed soon between high cliffs, and faced a fierce wind which almost blinded them for the time, but, when they emerged they found better shelter and, presently, Reed led them off the main road, then through another narrow gorge and into the cove.

They had passed around a curving wall of the mountain and, as it burst upon them suddenly, the spectacle was all the more pleasant.
Before them, like a sunken garden, lay a space of twenty or thirty acres, hemmed in by the high mountains, which seemed fairly to overhang its level spaces.

A small creek flowed down from a ravine on one side, and dashed out of a ravine on the other.

Splendid oaks, elms and maples grew in parts of the valley, and there was an orchard and a garden, but the greater part of it was cleared, and so well protected by the lofty mountains that most of the snow seemed to blow over it.