“Lucky for you the films were stored in the Ida, Jonas!” exclaimed Agnew.  “I’ll develop some of those in the morning, and see what sort of a show you put up.”

Diana rose.  “Well, good night to you all!  Mr. Milton, is there anything Na-che or I can do for you?”

“No, thank you, Miss Allen, I think I’m in good hands.”

Enoch rose to open the door for Diana.  “Thank you, Judge,” she said, “Good night!”

“Diana,” said Enoch, under cover of the conversation at the table, “before we start to-morrow, will you give me half an hour alone with you?”

There was pain and determination both in Enoch’s voice.  Diana glanced at him a little anxiously as she answered, “Yes, I will, Enoch.”

“Good night, Diana,” and Enoch retired to his bunk, where he lay wide awake long after the card game was ended and the room in darkness save for the dull glow of the fire.

He made no attempt the next day to obtain the half hour Diana had promised him.  He helped Jonas with their meager preparations for the trip, then took a gun and started along the trail which led up the Ferry canyon to the desert.  But he had not gone a hundred yards, when Diana called.

“Wait a moment, Judge!  I’ll go with you.”

She joined him shortly with her gun and game bag.  “We’ll have Na-che cook us a day’s supply of meat before we start,” she said.  “The hunting is apt to be poor on the trail we’re to take home.”

Enoch nodded but said nothing.  Something of the old grim look was in his eyes again.  He paused at the point where the canyon gave place to the desert.  Here a gnarled mesquite tree and an old half-buried log beneath it, offered mute evidence of a gigantic flooding of the river.

“Let’s sit here for a little while, Diana,” he said.

They put their guns against the mesquite tree and sat down facing the distant river.

“Diana,” Enoch began abruptly, “in spite of what your father and John Seaton believed and wanted me to believe, the things that the Brown papers said about my mother are true.  Only, Brown did not tell all.  He did not give the details of her death.  I suppose even Luigi hesitated to tell that because I almost beat him to death the last time he tried it.

“Seaton and I never talked much about the matter.  He tried to ferret out facts, but had no luck.  By the time I was seventeen or eighteen I realized that no man with a mother like mine had a right to marry.  But I missed the friendship of women, I suppose, for when I was perhaps eighteen or nineteen I made a discovery.  I found that somewhere in my heart I was carrying the image of a girl, a slender girl, with braids of light brown hair wrapped round her head, a girl with the largest, most intelligent, most tender gray eyes in the world, and a lovely curving mouth, with deep corners.  I named her Lucy, because I’d been reading Wordsworth and I began to keep a diary to her.  I’ve kept it ever since.