noon
before
Always he had lifted his eyes to it every morning when he rose , but now , next morning , he hung back consciously as one might shrink from looking at the face of a dead friend , and when at last he raised his head to look upward to it , an impenetrable shroud of mist lay between them -- and he was glad . And still he could not leave . The little creek was a lashing yellow torrent , and his horse , heavily laden as he must be , could hardly swim with his weight , too , across so swift a stream . But mountain streams were like June 's temper -- up quickly and quickly down -- so it was noon before he plunged into the tide with his saddle-pockets over one shoulder and his heavy transit under one arm . Even then his snorting horse had to swim a few yards , and he reached the other bank soaked to his waist line . But the warm sun came out just as he entered the woods , and as he climbed , the mists broke about him and scudded upward like white sails before a driving wind . Once he looked back from a `` fire-scald '' in the woods at the lonely cabin in the cove , but it gave him so keen a pain that he would not look again .