He rolled in his blankets on the soft bed of moss and he saw the stars through the needle-like fringe of the pinyons.  It seemed impossible to fall asleep.  The two domed peaks split the sky, and back of them, looming dark and shadowy, rose the mountain.  There was something cold, austere, and majestic in their lofty presence, and they made him feel alone, yet not alone.  He raised himself to see the quiet forms of Withers and Nas Ta Bega prone in the starlight, and their slow, deep breathing was that of tired men.  A bell on a mustang rang somewhere off in the valley and gave out a low, strange, reverberating echo from wall to wall.  When it ceased a silence set in that was deader than any silence he had ever felt, but gradually he became aware of the low murmur of the brook.  For the rest there was no sound of wind, no bark of dog or yelp of coyote, no sound of voice in the village.

He tried to sleep, but instead thought of this girl who was called the Sago Lily.  He recalled everything incident to their meeting and the walk to her home.  Her swift, free step, her graceful poise, her shapely form—­the long braid of hair, dull gold in the twilight, the beautiful bare foot and the strong round arm—­these he thought of and recalled vividly.  But of her face he had no idea except the shadowy, haunting loveliness, and that grew more and more difficult to remember.  The tone of her voice and what she had said—­how the one had thrilled him and the other mystified!  It was her voice that had most attracted him.  There was something in it besides music—­what, he could not tell —­sadness, depth, something like that in Nas Ta Bega’s beauty springing from disuse.  But this seemed absurd.  Why should he imagine her voice one that had not been used as freely as any other woman’s?  She was a Mormon; very likely, almost surely, she was a sealed wife.  His interest, too, was absurd, and he tried to throw it off, or imagine it one he might have felt in any other of these strange women of the hidden village.

But Shefford’s intelligence and his good sense, which became operative when he was fully roused and set the situation clearly before his eyes, had no effect upon his deeper, mystic, and primitive feelings.  He saw the truth and he felt something that he could not name.  He would not be a fool, but there was no harm in dreaming.  And unquestionably, beyond all doubt, the dream and the romance that had lured him to the wilderness were here; hanging over him like the shadows of the great peaks.  His heart swelled with emotion when he thought of how the black and incessant despair of the past was gone.  So he embraced any attraction that made him forget and think and feel; some instinct stronger than intelligence bade him drift.

. . . . . . . . . . .