t fluttered and fell and were forgotten
between dawn and dusk. Vanamee had said there was no death. But for one
second Presley could go one step further. Men were naught, death was
naught, life was naught; FORCE only existed--FORCE that brought men
into the world, FORCE that crowded them out of it to make way for
the succeeding generation, FORCE that made the wheat grow, FORCE that
garnered it from the soil to give place to the succeeding crop.

It was the mystery of creation, the stupendous miracle of recreation;
the vast rhythm of the seasons, measured, alternative, the sun and the
stars keeping time as the eternal symphony of reproduction swung in
its tremendous cadences like the colossal pendulum of an almighty
machine--primordial energy flung out from the hand of the Lord God
himself, immortal, calm, infinitely strong.

But as he stood thus looking down upon the great valley he was aware of
the figure of a man, far in the distance, moving steadily towards the
Mission of San Juan. The man was hardly more than a dot, but there was
something unmistakably familiar in his gait; and besides this, Presley
could fancy that he was hatless. He touched his pony with his spur. The
man was Vanamee beyond all doubt, and a little later Presley, descending
the maze of cow-paths and cattle-trails that led down towards the
Broderson Creek, overtook his friend.

Instantly Presley was aware of an immense change. Vanamee's face was
still that of an ascetic, still glowed with the rarefied intelligence of
a young seer, a half-inspired shepherd-prophet of Hebraic legends; but
the shadow of that great sadness which for so long had brooded over
him was gone; the grief that once he had fancied deathless was, indeed,
dead, or rather swallowed up in a victorious joy that radiated like
sunlight at dawn from the deep-set eyes, and the hollow, swarthy cheeks.
They talked together till nearly sundown, but to Presley's questions
as to the reasons for Vanamee's happiness, the other would say nothing.
Once only he allowed himself to touch upon the subject.

"Death and grief are little things," he said. "They are transient.
Life must be before death, and joy before grief. Else there are no such
things as death or grief. These are only negatives. Life is positive.
Death is only the absence of life, just as night is only the absence of
day, and if this is so, there is no such thing as death. There is only
life, and the suppression of life, that we, f