The little party, traveling in these silent places, through this ancient wilderness, would have fitted into the morning of the world. The gigantic old man, the lank, huge mule, and the woman riding on the pack saddle might have come up in some patriarchal decade out of Asia. The girl, straight, slim, lithe and beautiful as a naiad, her cloudy black hair banked around her face, belonged in sacred groves—in ancient sequestered places—one of those alluring, mysterious, fairy women of which the fable in every tongue remains. Called by innumerable sounds in the mouths of men, but seen thus always in the eye of the mind when those sounds are uttered. The Marchesa Soderrelli was right, on that day in Oban, when she set youth first among the gifts of the gods. It is the beautiful physical mystery that allures the senses of men. And youth, be it said, is the essence of that sorcery.

The Duke of Dorset came, too, with fitness into the picture; he was the moving, desolate figure of that canvas. Man arriving at his estate in pride, in strength, in glory, and fallen there into the clutch of destiny. In his visible aspect he had recovered in a degree; he no longer bore the evidences of extreme fatigue, he walked with the rifle under his arm, and with a casual notice of events.

There is a certain provision of Nature wholly blessed. When one is called to follow that which is dearest to him, nailed up in a coffin, to the grave; when the bitterness of death has wracked the soul to the extreme of physical endurance; then, when under the turn of the screw blood no longer comes, there exudes, instead of it, a divine liquor that numbs the sensibilities like an anÆsthetic, and one is able to walk behind the coffin in the road, to approach the grave, to watch the shovelful of earth thrown in, and to come away like other men, speaking of the sun, the harvest, the prospects of the to-morrow; it is not this day that is the deadliest; it is the day to follow—the months, the years to follow, when the broken soul has no longer an opiate.

The Duke of Dorset was in the door of life, in that golden age of it when the youth has hardened into the man, when the body has got its glory, and the mind its stature. And he moved here in this forest behind the others, a weapon in his hand, a figure belonging to the picture. He was the leader of the tribe, and its defense against its enemies; but a leader who had lost a kingdom, and whose followers had been put to the sword.

They followed the mountain ridges through the long afternoon, through this ancient, primeval forest. Below, the tops of the fir trees descended into an amphitheater of green, broken by shoulders of the mountain, and farther on into hollows that widened in perspective and filled themselves in the remote distances with haze.

About four o'clock they came out onto the ridge where the two men had first stopped in their journey from the coast. Here was the knoll, rising above them like a hump on the ridge, and set about with ancient fir trees; and here below it was the spring of water gushing into its stone bowl. The mountaineer stopped and lifted the Marchesa down from the mule, then he handed the rope bridle to the girl and indicated the spring with a gesture.

"You'll have to hold Jezebel or she'll poke her nose in hit first feller," he said; "I guess I'll look around some." Then he went up onto the crest of the knoll.

The Marchesa Soderrelli drank, scooping up the water with her hands; Caroline Childers drank, kneeling, wisps of hair falling beside her slim face into the pool. The Duke of Dorset approached, and remained standing, the butt of the rifle on the ground, his hands resting on the muzzle, watching, in his misery, this sylvan creature come out of the deep places of the wood to drink.

In a few minutes the old circuit rider appeared, and beckoned to the Duke of Dorset. Then he came down a few steps and spoke to the two women.

"Don't be skeered," he said, "we're agoin' to try how the gun shoots."

Then he went with the Duke up onto the high ground of the ridge. This summit commanded a view of the road ascending the mountain in a long, easy sweep—a beautiful brown ribbon stretched along a bank of scarlet. On this road two figures were advancing, a mile away, like tiny mechanical toys moving up the middle of the ribbon. The old man pointed them out with his finger.

"Them'll be scouts," he said. "How fur will your gun carry?"

The Duke of Dorset estimated the distance with his eye.

"One cannot be certain," he answered; "above six hundred yards."

"That air purty long shootin'; air you certain the bullet'll carry up?"

"Quite certain," replied the Duke.

The old man bobbed his chin, and pointed his finger down the mountain to a dead tree, standing like a mile post on the road.

"When they come up to that air fir," he said, "draw a bead on'em."

The Duke of Dorset elevated the sights for five hundred yards, and the two men waited without a word for the tiny toy figures on the velvet ribbon to approach. The knoll on which they stood was elevated above the surrounding wilderness of tree tops. Below, these deep green tops sloped, as though clipped beautifully with some gigantic shears. It was like looking downward over a green cloth with an indolent sun, softened by haze, lying on its surface. The Duke of Dorset stood with one foot advanced, the weight of his body resting on the foot that was behind the other, in the common attitude of one oppressed by fatigue. The old circuit rider stood beside him, bare-headed, his hat on the ground, a faint breeze stirring his gray hair.

The brooding, lonely silence of the afternoon lay on the world. A vagrant breath of wind moved on the ridge, idly through the tops of the ancient firs, but it did not descend into the forest. There, under the blue nimbus, nothing moved but the quaint figures traveling on the long brown band. When these two figures began to come up the last sweep of the road toward the dead fir, the Duke of Dorset raised the rifle to his shoulder. The old circuit rider watched him; he observed that the man's hand was unsteady, and that the muzzle of the gun wavered.

"Stranger," he said, "air you one of them shots that wobbles onto your mark?"

Now, there was among the frontiersmen, in the day of the hair trigger, a school of wilderness hunters, to be found at every shooting match, who maintained that no man could hold steadily on an object. They asserted that the muzzle of the rifle should be allowed to move, either in a straight line up or down onto the target, or across it in the arc of a circle. The trigger to be pulled when the line of sight touched on the target. The first disciples of this school were called the "line shots," and the second the "wobblers." Almost every pioneer followed one of these methods, and no more deadly marksmen at short range ever sighted along a gun barrel. They could drive a nail in with a bullet; they could split the bullet, at a dozen paces, on the edge of an ax; they could pick the gray squirrel out of the tallest hickory at eighty, at a hundred yards, when, lying flat to the limb, it presented a target not higher than an inch.

The Duke took down the rifle. He understood the delicate reference to his nerves.

"Perhaps I would better lie down," he said. Then his eye caught the bullet swinging to its leather string at the old man's middle, and he remembered the history of it. He handed the rifle to the mountaineer. "I am not fit to-day," he said; "will you try?" And he explained the mechanism of the rifle.

The old man took the gun, weighed it in his hands, tried the pull-of the trigger, and examined the sights.

"Hit air about the weight of the ole Minie rifle," he said, "an' the sights air fine. Do hit shoot where you hold it?"

"I think it may be depended on at this range," replied the Duke.

"Well," said the old man, "I hain't shot for a purty long spell, but I'll jist try it a whet."

He lifted the gun to his shoulder, pressed his bronzed cheek to the stock, and slipped his left hand out to the full length of the arm under the barrel. The two figures were within a dozen paces of the dead fir tree. The Duke thought one of them was the Japanese whom he had seen watching the chÂteau, and the other a forester, but he could not be certain at the distance. For perhaps thirty seconds the mountaineer stood like a figure cast in plaster, then the muzzle of the rifle began slowly to descend, and the report crashed out over the tree tops.

The forester, a little in advance of the other, fell in the road, his head and shoulders doubled up under him. The other, at the report, jumped as high as he could into the air, turned entirely around before he touched the earth, and began to run down the road. He ran, evidently in terror, his legs moving grotesquely on the center of the brown ribbon. The old mountaineer remained unmoving; his left hand far out under the barrel of the rifle, his face set to the stock. He moved the bolt and returned his finger to the trigger. Then the rigid muzzle of the rifle began once more to descend, in a dead straight line, and the report followed. The quaint figure, its legs twinkling on the ribbon, shot up into the air, and then fell spraddled out in the road, its arms and legs extended.

The Duke of Dorset turned to the mountaineer.

"My friend," he said, "that is the best shooting I ever saw—a moving target at more than five hundred yards."

The old man removed the gun from his shoulder and handed it to the Duke, stopped, picked up his hat and put it on his head. Then he replied to the Duke's compliment.

"Stranger," he said, "hit air the Almighty that kills."

It must be remembered that this man's God was the God of the Tishbite, who numbered his followers by the companies who drew the sword.

The two men returned at once to the spring, and the little party again set out through the mountains. The plan of travel was now changed. The circuit rider took a trail down the mountain in a direct line to the coast, and he hurried; the trail was at places rough and steep; the injured woman with difficulty kept her place on the pack saddle. They reached the low-lying foot hills, crossed the long broken hollow, dense with thickets, and ascended the next mountain, going due west. The old man traveled as fast as he could; he urged the mule, speaking to it as one might to a careless, lagging child, "Come along, Jezebel; mind where you're walkin'"; and when the mule stumbled, a gentle, scolding note came into his voice, "Pshaw! Jezebel, air your eyes in the back of your head?"

But in spite of the direct route and every effort of the old man they traveled slowly. The sun had gone down when they began the ascent of the second mountain. They stopped for a few minutes, and ate what remained of the food, then they pushed on, climbing toward the summit.

Meanwhile, night descended. A deep-blue twilight emerged from the hollows, the remote valleys, the hidden nooks and corners of the wilderness, crept in among the brown trunks of the fir trees, and climbed to the ridges. Then, imperceptibly, as though pigment flowed in, the twilight deepened, the stars came out, and it was night.

They crossed the summit of the second mountain, descended for perhaps three hundred yards, then turned due north and came out abruptly into the great road. The moon was beginning to come up, its hidden disk preceded by a golden haze that feebly lighted the world. The road lay outlined in shadow, running in a long sweep around a shoulder of the mountain on its way to the sea. The four persons continued down this road to the coast. The mountaineer leading the mule, on which the Marchesa Soderrelli rode, and the two others following behind them.

Caroline Childers, walking beside the Duke of Dorset, lagged as though worn out with fatigue. The space between the four persons widened and drew out into a considerable distance. Presently, when the mule turned the shoulder of the mountain, the girl stopped. At the same time, as upon some signal, the moon arose, pouring its silver light into the wilderness over the green tops of the fir trees and down into the road, etching delicate fantastic shadows on the bed of brown fir needles, filtering in among the vines massed on the wall, and turning the dark earth as by some magic into a soft, shimmering, illumined fairy world. The whole wilderness of tree tops rising to the sky was bathed in light. A mist, silvered at its edges, lay on the sea, hiding it, as under an opaque film.

When the girl spoke, her voice hurried as with an explanation.

"You did not understand the Marchesa Soderrelli. She merely wanted us to go on; to save ourselves."

"And you," said the man, "was that your reason, too?"

The girl hesitated. Then she answered, adding one sentence out of sequence to another. "She could not go on. I thought... I mean, you could get away alone—but not with us. You had done enough. It was not fair... any more. You had a right to your chance... to... your life."

"To my life!" the man echoed.

"Yes," replied the girl, "I mean your life is worth something. But she... but I... I have lost so much last night. I have lost... I have lost everything. But you... everything remains to you. You have lost nothing."

The man made an abrupt gesture with both hands.

"Lost nothing!" he repeated. Then he said the words over slowly, like one stating an absurd, incredible accusation before he answers it, each word distinctly, softly, as though it stood apart from its fellow.

"Lost nothing!"

He took a step or two nearer to the girl. The moon fell on his tall athletic body, projecting a black, distorted shadow on the road. The half of his face was in the light, and it was contracted with despair. The tendons in his hands were visible, moving the doubled fingers. His voice was low, distinct, compact.

"I have lost," he said, "everything, beginning from the day I was born. All the care and labor that my mother took when I was little is lost; all the bread that I have eaten, all the water that I have drunk, all the sun that has warmed me is lost. And the loss does not stop with that. I have lost whatever things the days, arriving one after the other, were bringing to me, except the blessed gift that the last one will bring. I am utterly and wholly ruined."

The man's words followed, one after the other, as though they were material things, having dimensions and weight.

"Death is nothing. It is life now, that is awful. I shall have to go on when it is no use to go on. I shall have to go on seeing you, hearing your voice, remembering every word you have said, the tone and expression with which you have said it, and every little unimportant gesture you have made. Every day that I live, I shall see and understand more vividly all that I have lost. And it will not get better. It will get worse. Every day I shall see you a little more clearly than I did the day before; I shall remember your words a little more distinctly; I shall understand a little more completely all that you would have been to me. And all of this time I shall be alone. So utterly alone that my mind staggers at the thought of it. I love you! I love you! Don't you see, don't you understand how I love you?"

The girl had not moved while the man was speaking.

"Do you love me like that?" she said.

"Yes," he answered.

"And have you loved me all along like that?"

"All along," he said.

"And will you always love me like that?"

"Like that," he said, "although I have lost you."

The girl stood with her arms hanging, her lips parted, her slender face gleaming like a flower, her hair spun darkness. The silence, the vast unending silence, the mystery of a newly minted world, lay about her, as they lay about that first woman, created by Divine enchantment, in the wilderness of Asia.

When she spoke again, her voice was so low that the man could hardly hear it. It was like a voice carried by the night over a great distance.

"But you have not lost me," she said.

Meanwhile, out of the mist, out of that opaque film lying on the sea, a rocket arose, described a great arc, and fell hissing among the tree tops.