On arriving at Auntie Belle's, Bob resolved to push on up the mountain
that very night, instead of waiting as usual until the following
morning. Accordingly, after supper, he saddled his horse, collected the
camp mail, and set himself in motion up the steep road.
Before he had passed Fern Falls, the twilight was falling. Hermit
thrushes sang down through the cooling forest. From the side hill,
exposed all the afternoon to the California summer sun, rose tepid
odours of bear-clover and snowbush, which exhaled out into space, giving
way to the wandering, faint perfumes of night. Bob took off his hat, and
breathed deep, greatly refreshed after the long, hot stage ride of the
day. Darkness fell. In the forest the strengthening moonlight laid its
wand upon familiar scenes to transform them. New aisles opened down the
woodlands, aisles at the end of which stood silvered, ghostly trees thus
distinguished by the moonbeams from their unnumbered brethren. The whole
landscape became ghostly, full of depths and shadows, mysteries and
allurements, heights and spaces unknown to the more prosaic day.
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