Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/104

 window at the foot of his bunk and looked out. When he had come up the trail that morning he had noticed little save that the hillside was steep  and the forest dense, but now that he could see  across the little plateau upon which the cottage  stood and down into the next valley, he looked  and looked again.

The country through which he had come on his journey from Rudolm had seemed to him all alike,  one narrow ravine after another with close tangled woods, precipitous slopes and rocky summits  in endless succession. But here he was looking out into a broad green basin where the hills drew  back from the lake in a gigantic semicircle, leaving the half-wooded slope to drop gently to wide  green meadows and a winding stream. Over to the north the hills closed in a little, but still left a  broad valley through which flowed away toward  Canada the river that was the lake’s outlet. Groups of trees extended downward from the woods and stood knee deep in the wild grass of  the sloping meadows. A cheerful tinkle sounded below the cottage, heralding the fact that Oscar