d sat motionless, huddled in a
corner of the seat, a thick veil covering her face; but now she began to
observe the physical changes in the landscape with a somber
satisfaction, and, for the first time, accepted the mountains
listlessly, almost gratefully, instead of rebelliously. In truth any
change was grateful to her; she did not want to think of the desert or
be reminded of it, and this transition, so marked, so sharply defined as
to make the brief railway journey from the plains below seem the passage
to another world, was especially welcome.

The human desire for change is rooted in the conviction, a vain and
deceptive one, that an entirely different environment must include or
create a new world of thought and emotion. So for once the Pearl's
desire was for the hills. She who had ever exulted in the wide, free
spaces of the desert, who had found the echo of her own heart in its
eternal mutation, its luring illusions, its mystery and its beauty, now
turned to the austere, shadowed, silent mountains as if begging them to
enfold her and hold her and hide her.

It was dark when they reached Colina, but a station wagon awaited them
and in this they drove through the village, a straggling settlement, the
narrow plateau permitting only two streets, both of them continuations
of the mountain roads, and surrounded by high mountains. Scattering
lights showed here and there from lamps shining through cabin windows,
but the silence, differing in kind if not in degree from the desert
silence, was only broken at this hour of the night by the desolate,
mocking bark of the coyotes.

Clear of the village, the horses turned and began to mount the hill
which led to Gallito's isolated cabin. Their progress was necessarily
slow, for the road was rough and full of deep ruts. The velvety
blackness of a mountain night was all about them and even the late
spring air seemed icy cold. Pearl had begun to shiver in spite of her
wraps when the light from a cabin window gleamed across the road and the
driver pulled up his horses.

"Somebody's waiting for you," said the driver.

"Yes, Saint Harry," answered Gallito. "He's getting supper for us."

The door, however, was not opened for them and it was not until the
driver had turned his horses down the hill that they heard a bolt
withdrawn. Then Gallito pushed in and Pearl followed, stepping wearily
across the threshold.

The room, a large one for a mountain cabin, was warm and clean; som