resemblance to human figures!  Pressing a few yards further, he himself presently became a part of this shadowy procession, which on closer scrutiny revealed itself as a single file of Indians, following each other in the same tireless trot.  The woods and underbrush were full of them; all moving on, as he had moved, in a line parallel with the vanishing coach.  Sometimes through the openings a bared painted limb, a crest of feathers, or a strip of gaudy blanket was visible, but nothing more.  And yet only a few hundred yards away stretched the dusky, silent plain—­vacant of sound or motion!

Meanwhile the Sage Wood and Pine Barren stage coach, profoundly oblivious—­after the manner of all human invention—­of everything but its regular function, toiled dustily out of the higher plain and began the grateful descent of a wooded canyon, which was, in fact, the culminating point of the depression, just described, along which the shadowy procession was slowly advancing, hardly a mile in the rear and flank of the vehicle.  Miss Julia Cantire, who had faced the dust volleys of the plain unflinchingly, as became a soldier’s daughter, here stood upright and shook herself—­her pretty head and figure emerging like a goddess from the enveloping silver cloud.  At least Mr. Boyle, relegated to the back seat, thought so—­although her conversation and attentions had been chiefly directed to the driver and mail agent.  Once, when he had light-heartedly addressed a remark to her, it had been received with a distinct but unpromising politeness that had made him desist from further attempts, yet without abatement of his cheerfulness, or resentment of the evident amusement his two male companions got out of his “snub.”  Indeed, it is to be feared that Miss Julia had certain prejudices of position, and may have thought that a “drummer”—­or commercial traveler—­was no more fitting company for the daughter of a major than an ordinary peddler.  But it was more probable that Mr. Boyle’s reputation as a humorist—­a teller of funny stories and a boon companion of men—­was inconsistent with the feminine ideal of high and exalted manhood.  The man who “sets the table in a roar” is apt to be secretly detested by the sex, to say nothing of the other obvious reasons why Juliets do not like Mercutios!

For some such cause as this Dick Boyle was obliged to amuse himself silently, alone on the back seat, with those liberal powers of observation which nature had given him.  On entering the canyon he had noticed the devious route the coach had taken to reach it, and had already invented an improved route which should enter the depression at the point where the Indians had already (unknown to him) plunged into it, and had conceived a road through the tangled brush that would shorten the distance by some miles.  He had figured it out, and believed that it “would pay.”  But by this time they were beginning the somewhat steep and difficult ascent of the canyon on the other side.  The vehicle had not crawled