gh--skulking Indian hordes, as
he must, could have no better message reach him than that. The bent of
his mind was toward mysticism, and while he did not think the train of
reasoning out, could not have said that he believed it so, yet the
familiar lines flashing suddenly, clearly, on the curtain of his mind,
seemed to him, very simply, to be sent from a larger thought than his
own. As a child might take a strong hand held out as it walked over
rough country, so he accepted this quite readily and happily, as from
that Power who was never far from him, and in whose service, beyond most
people, he lived and moved. Low but clear and deep his voice went on,
following one stanza with its mate:

Since with pure and firm affection
Thou on God hast set thy love,
With the wings of His protection
He will shield thee from above.

The simplicity of his being sheltered itself in the broad promise of the
words.

Light-heartedly he rode on and on, though now more carefully; lying flat
and peering over the crests of hills a long time before he crossed
their tops; going miles perhaps through ravines; taking advantage of
every bit of cover where a man and a horse might be hidden; travelling
as he had learned to travel in three years of experience in this
dangerous Indian country, where a shrub taken for granted might mean a
warrior, and that warrior a hundred others within signal. It was his
plan to ride until about twelve--to reach Massacre Mountain, and there
rest his horse and himself till gray daylight. There was grass there and
a spring--two good and innocent things that had been the cause of the
bad, dark thing which had given the place its name. A troop under
Captain James camping at this point, because of the water and grass, had
been surprised and wiped out by five hundred Indian braves of the wicked
and famous Red Crow. There were ghastly signs about the place yet;
Morgan had seen them, but soldiers may not have nerves, and it was good
camping ground.

On through the valleys and half-way up the slopes, which rolled here far
away into a still wilder world, the young man rode. Behind the distant
hills in the east a glow like fire flushed the horizon. A rim of pale
gold lifted sharply over the ridge; a huge round ball of light pushed
faster, higher, and lay, a bright world on the edge of the world, great
against the sky--the moon had risen. The twilight trembled as the yellow
rays struck into its depths,