Page:A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879).djvu/280

 ous, ah! glorious beyond any other, but it was a dismal and depressing ride. The dead past buried its dead. Not an allusion was made to the conversation previously. "Jim's" manner was courteous, but freezing, and when I left him on my return he said he hardly thought he should be back from the Snowy Range before I left. Essentially an actor, was he, I wonder, posing on the previous day in the attitude of desperate remorse, to impose on my credu frighten me; or was it a genuine and unpremeditated outburst of passionate regret for the life which he had thrown away? I cannot tell, but I think it was the last. As I cautiously rode back, the sunset glories were reddening the mountain-tops, and the Park lay in violet gloom. It was wonderfully magnificent, but oh, so solemn, so lonely! I rode a very large, well-bred mare, with three shoes loose and one off, and she fell with me twice and was very clumsy in crossing the Thompson, which was partly ice and partly a deep ford, but when we reached comparatively level grassy ground I had a gallop of nearly two miles, which I enjoyed thoroughly, her great swinging stride being so easy and exhilarating after Birdie's short action.

2em This is a piteous day, quite black, freezing hard, and with a fierce north-east wind. The absence of sunshine here, where it is nearly perpetual, has