_ PART ONE
CHAPTER III
Meanwhile, they drew steadily over the plain; the mountains before them gradually lost their aspect of mere silhouette; depths were discernible; the blue dissolved to green, to towering slopes dense with foliage. Directly before them a dark shadow steadily grew darker, until it was resolved into a cleft through the range. They drew nearer and nearer to the pierced barrier, the road mounted perceptibly, the trees thickened by the wayside. A covey of dun partridge fluttered out of the underbrush.
The sun was high in a burning grey vault, and flooded the plain with colorless, bright light. The stage paused before entering the opening in the rocky wall; the stranger in the rear seat turned for a comprehensive, last survey. Simmering in a calorific envelope the distant roofs and stacks of Stenton were visible, isolated in the white heat of the pitiless day. Above the city hung a smudge, a thumbprint of oily black smoke, carrying the suggestion of an intolerable concentration, a focal point of the fiery discomfort. In the foreground a buzzard wheeled, inevitable, depressing.
With a sharp flourish of his whip Gordon urged the stage into the cold humidity of the gorge. Stenton and the plain were lost as it passed between close, dripping rocks, rank verdure, masses of gigantic, paleolithic fern. _