“Our Father,” she said in a voice that sounded miles away to herself.  Was there any Father, and could He hear her?  And did He care?  “Which art in heaven—­” but heaven was so far away and looked so cruelly serene to her in her desolateness and danger! “hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come—­” whatever that might mean.  “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”  It was a long prayer to pray, alone with the pale moon-rain and the graves, and a distant wolf, but it was her mother’s wish.  Her will being done here over the dead—­was that anything like the will of the Father being done in heaven?  Her untrained thoughts hovered on the verge of great questions, and then slipped back into her pathetic self and its fear, while her tongue hurried on through the words of the prayer.

Once the horse stirred and breathed a soft protest.  He could not understand why they were stopping so long in this desolate place, for nothing apparently.  He had looked and looked at the shapeless mound before which the girl was standing; but he saw no sign of his lost master, and his instincts warned him that there were wild animals about.  Anyhow, this was no place for a horse and a maid to stop in the night.

A few loose stones rattled from the horse’s motion.  The girl started, and looked hastily about, listening for a possible pursuer; but everywhere in the white sea of moonlight there was empty, desolate space.  On to the “Amen” she finished then, and with one last look at the lonely graves she turned to the horse.  Now they might go, for the duty was done, and there was no time to be lost.

Somewhere over toward the east across that untravelled wilderness of white light was the trail that started to the great world from the little cabin she had left.  She dared not go back to the cabin to take it, lest she find herself already followed.  She did not know the way across this lonely plain, and neither did the horse.  In fact, there was no way, for it was all one arid plain so situated that human traveller seldom came near it, so large and so barren that one might wander for hours and gain no goal, so dry that nothing would grow.

With another glance back on the way she had come, the girl mounted the horse and urged him down into the valley.  He stepped cautiously into the sandy plain, as if he were going into a river and must try its depth.  He did not like the going here, but he plodded on with his burdens.  The girl was light; he did not mind her weight; but he felt this place uncanny, and now and then would start on a little spurt of haste, to get into a better way.  He liked the high mountain trails, where he could step firmly and hear the twigs crackle under his feet, not this muffled, velvet way where one made so little progress and had to work so hard.