There was a small, triangular shelf hung between the chimney and a gable, and here Vag could lie, almost completely stripped, protected from the interested gaze of strollers who might happen to glance up at the House roof. Here he could surrender himself to the rays of the hot sun--allow these rays to suck the energy out of him until he was their debilitated slave, let them gradually numb-his senses until he felt that, by the consummation of some mysterious union he had become part of a dazzling realm of sunlight. By rolling over a slightly so that the burning tin touched his bare shoulder, sending a delightful spasm of pain through his core, he could see down the steep slate roof to the turgid Charles far below, wandering aimlessly between green banks and slatternly factories...

He closed his eyes and still saw a river, another river which looped almost directly beneath him as he lay at the rim of the valley and gazed a dizzy thousand feet down a sheer granite cliff. This river was also slow and gently, meandering through meadows which were solid yellow from their cloaks of mountain daisies. But it was the quiet of a river which is battered and exhausted from the reckless rush through a steep gorge where it has been cut to snowy foam against the chaotic jumble of jagged boulders, where it has hurtled over precipices--not in smooth little aprons but in balls of white water which shoot far out into the air and then plummet downwards like rockets, leaving behind them long confetti-streamers which are lost below in dense clouds of mist. Down their in the flat valley, the river could forget this roaring nightmare and become a lazy serpent of varied greens; light greens where the bright sands lay near the surface, shading off perfectly into mysterious black-greens where the deep pools were.

Opposite Vag was another granite wall, rising as steeply from the valley floor as the walls of a room. The vast expanse of bare rock, which swept upward with breath-taking rapidity, was as ponderously grand as the earth itself. Crowning the cliff was an abrupt line of forest; and Vag could imagine wandering into it. Here were no scrub-by pines with long dusty-green needles--mere chaparral growth such as covered the foot--hill slopes-but high-mountain firs and redwoods, giants which had already lived through many centuries. They formed an auditorium with a roof far above supported by gigantic, perfectly shaped pillars, widely spaced so that one could see far back into the endless gloom. Occasionally sharply defined sunbeams would filter down to the bare forest floor, but neither they nor the few mountain birds whose liquid piping echoed round about could disturb the sepulchral peace. There was also a sepulchral chill...

Back on his lookout, Vag lifted his eyes above the forest to the sky-line of distant peaks, in the high back--country. Here was the grandest sight of all. Against a violet, cloudless sky they reared in mighty heaps--some smooth and rolling, others leaping up in jagged swoops to abrupt pin-points. Their naked reds and greys were broken by blue-white patches of glaciers, slowly slipping down their inaccessible ravines. Vag could imagine the icy wind currents which ever-lastingly moaned along down these ravines...

He shivered, for the chimney cast a long shadow over him and an evening breeze was already ruffling the Charles. Slipping on some trousers and bundling his blanket, he crawled along the sharp ridge over to a gable window. He felt indescribably exuberant, for in three weeks he would be on his way to the mountains.