d sit and look down across the valley and from which far out
somewhere to north or south he might see fools seeking for the gold he
had found. It was a little cup set in the side of the mountain, a tiny
valley at once beautiful and aloof, and he had not been here since last
fall. In it he could rest unmolested, unwatched.

During the day there had been showers; now the sun was out warmly while
here and there the sky was hidden by clouds and in places he could see
the little mists shaken downward through the bright air. Warm rains
would mean a quickened thaw, open trails and swifter travel. In a way
a propitious season was making it up to him for the time he was losing
in idleness with a hole in his side.

An odd incident occurred that afternoon. Drennen, hard man as he was,
Inured to the heavy shocks of a life full of them, felt this little
thing strangely. He was resting, sitting upon a great boulder under a
pine tree. The cup-like valley, or depressed plateau, lay at his left,
himself upon an extreme rim of it. As he brooded he noted idly how the
sunshine was busied with the vapour filled air, building of it a
triumphant arch, gloriously coloured. His mood was not for brightness
and yet, albeit with but half consciousness, he watched. Did a man who
has followed the beck of hope of gold ever see a rainbow without
wondering what treasure lay at the far end of the radiant promise? So,
idly, Dave Drennen now.

At first just broken bits of colour. Then slowly the bits merged into
one and the arc completed, the far end seeming to rest upon the further
rim of the level open space. It seemed a tangible thing, not a
visioned nothing born of nothingness and to perish utterly in a
twinkling.

"A promise that is a lie," he said to himself bitterly. "Like the
promises of men."

And then . . . to his startled fancies she had come into being like the
rainbow, from nothingness . . . where the foot of the arch had
appeared to rest stood the girl, Ygerne. A quarter of a mile between
Drennen sitting here and her standing there, a stretch of boulder
strewn mountain side separating them, God's covenant joining them.
Drennen stiffened, started to his feet as though he had looked upon
magic. At the foot of the rainbow not just gold . . . gold he had in
plenty now . . . but a woman . . .

He laughed his old ugly laugh and settled back upon his rock, his eyes
jerked away from her, sent back down the slope of the mounta