was the omen of their destiny; the formless blackness through
which they had groped was the way of life, but for such as were not
condemned to eternal darkness Venus held high her lamp and they scaled the
heights.

And Judith, listening, found her heart a battle-field of love and hate.
"Were women dogs, that men should play with them in idle moods, caress
them, and fling them out for other toys?" she demanded of herself, even
while the tones of his voice melted her innermost being to thankfulness
for this hour that he was wholly hers.

Gayly, with ready turns of speech and snatches of song, trolled in his
musical barytone, Peter rode through the night, even as he rode through
life, a Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart, unbrushed by the wing of sorrow,
loving his pale griefs for the values they gave the picture. And Judith
understood by reason of that exquisite perception that was hers in all
matters pertaining to him, and, knowing, only loved the more.

Down the valley came the sharp yelp of a coyote, and in a moment the
towering crags had taken it up, the echo repeating it and giving it back
to the valley, where the coyote barked again at the shadow of his voice.
The night was full of the eerie laughter. Peter put a restraining hand on
Dolly's bridle, and, waiting for the coyote to stop, called Judith's name,
and all the mountains made music of it. The echo sang the old Hebrew name
as if it had been a psalm. Peter's voice gave it to the mountains
joyously, but the mountains gave it back in the minor. And Judith was
reminded of the soft, singing syllables that her mother, in the Indian
way, had made of her daughter's Indian name. The remembrance tugged at her
heart. In her joy at seeing Peter she had forgotten that the errand that
had brought her was an errand of life and death--life and death for her
brother!

But Peter's ready enthusiasms pressed him hard. Surely love-making was the
business of such a night. "Ah, Judith, goddess of the heights, if I could
sing your name like the mountains, would you love me a little?"

For his pains he had a flash of white teeth in a smile that recalled his
first acquaintance with Kitty, the sort of smile one would give to a "nice
boy" when his manoeuvres were a trifle obvious. "Not if you sang my name
as the chorus of all the Himalayas and the Rockies and Andes, and with the
fire of all their volcanoes and the beauty of their snows and the strength
of all their hills, for it's not my