truck. Never for a moment had she doubted that the
sterling integrity of her husband had brought a special dispensation of
Providence, and while her faith in Divine Providence was by no means
shaken, she did begin to doubt the miracle. Perhaps, after all, this
loud and boastful Wunpost had been more than an instrument of
Providence--he might, in fact, have been a kindly but misguided friend,
who had shaped his vengeance to serve their special needs. For he knew
they needed the road and, since he could salt a crevice anywhere, he had
located his mine up their canyon. And then Eells had jumped the mine and
built the road, and----Well, really, after all, it was no more than
right to go out and thank him for his kindness. He was wrong, of course,
and led astray by angry passions; but Wilhelmina and he were friends
and----She rose up and hurried out after him.

The blazing light in the heavens almost blinded her sight as she stepped
out into the sun; and high up above the peaks, like cones of burnished
metal, she saw two thundercaps, turning black at the base and mounting
on the superheated air. There was the hush in the air which she had
learned to associate with an explosion such as was about to take place,
and she looked back anxiously, for her husband was up the canyon and the
downpour might strike above Panamint. It was clouds such as these that
had come together before to form the cloudburst which had isolated their
mine, and though they now appeared daily she could never escape the fear
that once more they would send down their floods. Every day they struck
somewhere, and one more bone-dry canyon ran bank-high and spewed its
refuse across the plain, and each time she had the feeling that their
sins might be punished by another visitation from on high. But she only
glanced back once, for Wunpost was packing and Billy was looking on
hopelessly.

"Oh, Mr. Calhoun!" she called, "please don't go up the canyon
now--there's a cloudburst forming above the peaks."

"I'll make it," he grumbled, cocking his eye at the clouds--and then he
stopped and looked again. "There went lightning," he said; "that's a
mighty bad sign--they're stabbing out towards each other."

"Yes, I'm sure you'd better stay," she went on apologetically, "and
please don't think you're not welcome. But oh! this heat is
terrible--I'll have to go back--but Billy will stop and help you."

She raised her sunshade as if she were fleeing from a rain-storm and