CHAPTER XLIII.
ACROSS THE SNOW.
Hawker the elder, as I said, casting one glance at the body of his son, whom he knew not, and another at Captain Desborough, who was just rising from the ground after his fall, set spurs to his noble chestnut horse, and, pushing through the contracted barriers of slate which closed up the southern end of the amphitheatre where they had been surprised, made for the broader and rapidly rising valley which stretched beyond.
He soon reached the rocky gate, where the vast ridge of schist, alternating with the limestone, and running north and south in high serrated ridges, was cut through by a deep fissure, formed by the never idle waters of a little creek, that in the course of ages had mined away the softer portions of the slate, and made a practicable pass toward the mountains.
He picked his way with difficulty through the tumbled boulders that lay in the chasm; and then there was a cool brisk wind on his forehead, and a glare in his eyes.

The chill breath of the west wind from the mountain--the glare of the snow that filled up the upper end of the valley, rising in level ridges towards the sky-line.
He had been this path before; and if he had gone it a hundred times again, he would only have cursed it for a rough, desperate road, the only hope of a desperate man.

Not for him to notice the thousand lessons that the Lord had spread before him in the wilderness! Not for him to notice how the vegetation changed when the limestone was passed, and the white quartz reefs began to seam the slaty sides of the valley like rivers of silver! Not for him to see how, as he went up and on, the hardy Dicksoniae, still nestled in stunted tufts among the more sheltered side gullies, long after her tenderer sister, the queenly Alsophylla had been left behind.

He only knew that he was a hunted wild beast, and that his lair was beyond the snow.
The creek flashed pleasantly among the broken slate, full and turbid under the mid-day sun.

After midnight, when its fountains are sealed again by the frosty breath of night, that creek will be reduced to a trickling rill.