Hand in hand, they went.  They spoke no more, but communed with each other through a more subtle channel of silence.  Celestial melodies rang in their ears; the celestial landscape gladdened their eyes; the peace of God, their Father, was in their hearts.  They walked hand in hand for the last time in this, their first estate.

PART SECOND.

  “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
  The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
    Hath had elsewhere its setting,
      And cometh from afar. 
    Not in entire forgetfulness
    And not in utter nakedness,
  But trailing clouds of glory do we come
    From God who is our home.”

—­Wordsworth.

  “Two shall be born the whole wide world apart,
  And speak in different tongues and have no thought
  Each of the other’s being, and no heed;
  And these o’er unknown seas and unknown lands
  Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death;
  And all unconsciously shape every act
  And bend each wandering step to this one end—­
  That, one day, out of darkness they shall meet
  And read life’s meaning in each other’s eyes.”

—­Susan Marr Spalding.

I.

  “Even a child is known by his doings.”—­Prov. 20:11.

How it did rain!  For two long months the sky had been one unchangeable color of blue; but now the dark clouds hung low and touched the horizon at every point dropping their long-accumulated water on the thirsty barrens, soaking the dried-up fields and meadows.  The earth was thirsty, and the sky had at last taken pity.  It rained all day.  The water-ditches along the streets of the village ran thick and black.  The house-wife’s tubs and buckets under the dripping eaves were overrunning.  The dust was washed from the long rows of trees which lined the streets.

It rained steadily all over the valley.  The creek which came from the mountains, and which distributed its waters to the town and adjacent farm-lands, was unusually muddy.  Up in the canyon, just above the town, it seemed to leap over the rocks with unwonted fury, dashing its brown waters into white foam.  The town below, the farms and gardens of the whole valley, depended for their existence on that small river.  Through the long, hot summer its waters had been distributed into streams and sub-streams like the branches of a great tree, and had carried the life-giving element to the growing vegetation in the valley; but now it was master no more.  The rain was pouring down on places which the river could not reach.  No wonder the river seemed angry at such usurpation.

About two miles from town, upon the high bench-land which lay above the waters in the river, stood a hut.  It was built of unhewn logs, and had a mud roof.  Stretches of sagebrush desert reached in every direction from it.  A few acres of cleared land lay near by, its yellow stubble drinking in the rain.  A horse stood under a shed.  A pile of sagebrush with ax and chopping block lay in the yard.