Dick did not long so much for green foliage now, as a chill wind began to blow.

All of them carried cloaks or overcoats rolled tightly and tied to their saddles, which they loosed and put on.
The wind rose, and, confined within the narrow limits of the pass, it began to groan loudly.

A thin sheet of rain came on its edge, and the drops were almost as cold as those of winter.
Dick's first sensation of uneasiness and discomfort disappeared quickly.
Like his cousin, Harry, he had inherited a feeling for the wilderness.
His own ancestor, Paul Cotter, had been a great woodsman too, and, as he drew on the buckskin gauntlets and wrapped the heavy cloak about his body, his second sensation was one of actual physical pleasure.
Why should he regard the forest with a hostile eye?
His ancestors had lived in it and often its darkness had saved them from death by torture.
He looked up at the dark slopes, but he could see only the black masses of foliage and the thin sheets of driven rain.

For a little while, at least, his mind reproduced the wilderness.

It was there in all its savage loneliness and majesty.