Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/139

 snow-field of gold, these heavenly little flowersoh, such beauty!"

After a few more moments of breathless gazing, gazing upon everything, she started up the mountain. The first few hundred yards she followed a faintly marked trail which led through dense woods, over great boulders covered with dark green moss. Occasionally a little rushing brook trickled across her path. For quite a way Eepersip kept climbing over the huge boulders, and the path was very mossy. After a while it began to grow fainter and harder to follow, and at last it was shut off entirely by the thick bushes and trees which surrounded it. Here she sat down to rest and to think a while.

She looked about and came upon a bubbling spring, at which she drank. No water she had ever found was like this. It tasted of the strong, delicious mountain air. She drank deeply, and, when she had quenched her thirst, continued her way. Here flowers which made her think of foam at seawhite, star-like, with silver-tipped petalstwined themselves among the trees mingled with wild rosesdawn-flowers of deep pink or sun-bright yellow. Strange orchids grew about, many of them pure white and fringed like fluffy clouds. One had green blossoms with long whitish spurs