d mighty fragments.
There was never blue sky in sight--only, far up, a diminishing and
lighter grey to testify that above it the yellow sun might be shining;
but all the lower heavens were a-sweep with vast cloud masses,
irregular, huge, hurling across the sky. They hung so low that one could
follow the speed of their motion and almost gauge it by miles per hour.
And in the distance they seemed to brush the tops of the hills. Seeing
this, the doctor remembered what he had heard of rain in this region. It
would come, they said, in sheets and masses--literal water-falls. Dry
arroyos suddenly filled and became swift torrent, rolling big boulders
down their courses. There were tales of men fording rivers who were
suddenly overwhelmed by terrific walls of water which rushed down from
the higher mountains in masses four and eight feet high. In coming they
made a thundering among the hills and they plucked up full grown trees
like twigs thrust into wet mud. Indeed, that was the sort of rain one
would expect in such a country, so whipped and naked of life. Even the
reviving rainfall was sent in the form of a scourge; and that which
should make the grass grow might tear it up by the roots.

That was a time of change and of portent, and a day well fitted to the
mood of Randall Byrne. He, also, had altered, and there was about to
break upon him the rain of life, and whether it would destroy him or
make him live, and richly, he could not guess. But he was naked to the
skies of chance--naked as this landscape.

Far past the mid-day they reached the streets of Elkhead and stopped at
the hotel. As the doctor swung down from his saddle, cramped and sore
from the long ride, thunder rattled over the distant hills and a patter
of rain splashed in the dust and sent up a pungent odor to his
nostrils. It was like the voice of the earth proclaiming its thirst. And
a blast of wind leaped down the street and lifted the brim of Barry's
hat and set the bandana at his throat fluttering. He looked away into
the teeth of the wind and smiled.

There was something so curious about him at the instant that Randall
Byrne wanted to ask him into the hotel--wanted to have him knee to knee
for a long talk. But he remembered an old poem--the sea-shell needs the
waves of the sea--the bird will not sing in the cage. And the yellow
light in the eyes of Barry, phosphorescent, almost--a thing that might
be nearly seen by night--that, surely, would not shine unde