hovered so
low that the topmost crags seemed to support its glowing colors. It
was no wonder that the child's mind, already awed and made receptive
by his thoughts of Heaven, was at once filled with the idea that its
gates had been opened before him. He dropped his sister's finger and
went forward a few steps, his eager eyes fixed on the glory that
flamed in the east, and his heart beating wildly with the thought that
if he ran on a little way he could go in and see his mother. Of
course, she would see him coming and she would run out to meet him and
take him in her arms, just as Marguerite did when he came home from
Janey's. Filled with the sudden, imperious impulse, he ran down the
hill on which they were standing, across the dry, sandy bed of a
watercourse, and up the hill on the other side. The miracle of beauty
which dazzled him was of almost daily occurrence, but, baby that he
was, he had never noticed it before.

Marguerite took Wellesly's letter from her pocket when Paul dropped
her hand, and, turning to get the sunset light on the page, read it
over and over. She knew Paul had run on ahead, but thought he was
playing in the arroyo. She folded the letter slowly and put it in her
pocket again and watched for a few moments the glowing banks of color
that filled the western sky. Then she looked down the little hill and
along the arroyo, calling, "Come, Paul! We must go home." But the
sturdy little figure was nowhere in sight. At that moment he was
crossing the second hill beyond. She ran up and down the arroyo
calling, "Paul! Paul!" at the top of her voice. Gathering her white
skirts in one hand, she rushed to the top of the hill and called again
and again. But there was no reply. As she listened, straining forward,
all the earth seemed strangely still. The silence struck back upon her
heart suffocatingly. Over the crest of the next hill Paul heard her
voice and hid behind a big, close clump of feathery mesquite, fearful
lest she should find him and take him home again. Across the arroyo
she ran, and up to the hill-top, where she stood and called and looked
eagerly about. But he, intent on carrying out his plan of reaching the
rosy, glowing gates of Heaven over there such a little way, crouched
close behind the spreading bush and made no answer.

"He would not have gone so far," she thought, anxiously. "He must be
back there in one of those arroyos."

She ran back and hurried farther up and down, first one and t