The Point of View

He stood there in the brilliant sunlight, bareheaded still; looking
dreamily off across the wide reach of the canyon. How peaceful, how
sublimely beautiful, it all appeared; how delicately the tints of those
distant trees blended and harmonized with the brown rocks beyond! The
broad, spreading picture slowly impressed itself upon his brain,
effacing and taking the place of personal animosity. In so fair a
world Hope is ever a returning angel with healing in his wings; and
Winston's face brightened, the black frown deserting his forehead, all
sternness gone from his eyes. There surely must be a way somewhere,
and he would discover it; only the weakling and the coward can sit down
in despair. Out of the prevailing silence he suddenly distinguished
voices at hand, and the sound awoke him to partial interest. Just
before the door where he stood a thick growth of bushes obstructed the
view. The voices he heard indistinctly came from beyond, and he
stepped cautiously forward, peering in curiosity between the parted
branches.

It was a narrow section of the ledge, hemmed in by walls of rock and
thinly carpeted with grass, a small fire burning near its centre.
There was an appetizing smell of cookery in the air, and three figures
were plainly discernible. The old miner, Mike, sat next the embers, a
sizzling frying-pan not far away, his black pipe in one oratorically
uplifted hand, a tin plate in his lap, his grouchy, seamed old face
screwed up into argumentative ugliness, his angry eyes glaring at the
Swede opposite, who was loungingly propped against a convenient stone.
The latter looked a huge, ungainly, raw-boned fellow, possessing a red
and white complexion, with a perfect shock of blond hair wholly
unaccustomed to the ministrations of a comb. He had a long, peculiarly
solemn face, rendered yet more lugubrious by unwinking blue eyes and a
drooping moustache of straw color. Altogether, he composed a picture
of unutterable woe, his wide mouth drawn mournfully down at the
corners, his forehead wrinkled in perplexity. Somewhat to the right of
these two more central figures, the young Mexican girl contributed a
touch of brightness, lolling against the bank in graceful relaxation,
her black eyes aglow with scarcely repressed merriment. However the
existing controversy may have originated, it had already attained a
stage for the display of considerable temper.