Moreton had not found his surroundings in Birmingham quite satisfactory, notwithstanding the fact that he had fallen in love, after the old time fervid fashion, with a fair young Northern girl living there. The little mining town, cramped between the hills, full of rough folk, raw and new, could not be very attractive to a man who, no matter how practical and matter of fact in his disposition, had studied art and who still nursed the artist's dreams. As he sat there with his blue-gray eyes slowly sweeping the valley, he was not as blithe-looking as a model sportsman should be. His dog, a small brown spaniel, sat down at his feet and eyed him lazily. No sound, save the rustle of the wind in the trees and a dull distant tapping of a woodpecker, was disturbing the broad silence of the forest. The sky was intensely blue. Suddenly a short puff of dampness came from the southwest, followed by a growl of thunder, a thing not usual in winter, even in that latitude. Moreton arose and saw a heavy line of black cloud overhanging some conical peaks far away on the southwestern horizon.
"Come Nat," he said to his dog, "we must be going back; a nasty squall is coming. We shall get our jackets wet."
Nat answered with divers canine antics and the two turned away from the valley, the man walking with long firm strides and the dog trotting perfunctorily at his side. Their way led among the flanking spurs and foot-hills of the range, now over great fragmentary bowlders, now through yawning clefts and down winding defiles, sometimes on bare ridges of shale, anon under the dark odorous brushes of the pines. The cloud came after them, sending in advance its gusts of moist, fragrant air. A vast wing reached up to the zenith and a few big drops of rain pattered down. A morning shower in the mountains comes at race-horse speed. The swiftest birds are caught by it. A flock of noisy crows went flapping across the valley, striving in vain to outstrip the slanting flood that fell with a broad, washing roar from that rushing cloud.
"We are in for a soaking, Nat," grumbled Moreton, as he plucked up the collar of his shooting jacket; "a deuced bad outcome for our first day's shooting in America!"