itted and
smoothed on the inside. The cover was not fastened, but only held in
place by the weight of stones and earth piled above it. This bin was
half filled with finely broken ore, and as he lifted it in his hands
yellow dust sifted through his fingers.

Quivering with a strange excitement he delved deeper, lifting the
precious particles by handfuls, feeling of it, sifting it between his
fingers, and holding the torch close to the mass to catch the dull
glow of it. For a long time he knelt there, wondering at it, dreaming
over it, and feeling of it. Then he covered it all as he had found it,
and taking the wood for which he had come, he replenished the fire and
laid himself down to sleep.

What was gold to him? What were all the riches of the earth and of the
caves of the earth? Only one thought absorbed him,--the woman whom he
had left waiting for him on the burning plain, and a haunting memory
that would never leave him--never be stilled.

CHAPTER XV

THE BIG MAN'S RETURN

The night was bitter cold after a day of fierce heat. Three people
climbed the long winding trail from the plains beneath, slowly,
carefully, and silently. A huge mountaineer walked ahead, leading a
lean brown horse. Seated on the horse was a woman with long, pale
face, and deeply sunken dark eyes that looked out from under arched,
dark brows with a steady gaze that never wandered from some point just
ahead of her, not as if they perceived anything beyond, but more as if
they looked backward upon some terror.

Behind them on a sorrel horse--a horse slenderer and evidently of
better stock than the brown--rode another woman, also with dark eyes,
now heavy lidded from weariness, and pale skin, but younger and
stronger and more alert to the way they were taking. Her face was
built on different lines: a smooth, delicately modeled oval, wide at
the temples and level of brow, with heavy dark hair growing low over
the sides of the forehead, leaving the center high, and the arch of
the head perfect. Trailing along in the rear a small mule followed,
bearing a pack.

Sometimes the big man walking in front looked back and spoke a word of
encouragement, to which the younger of the two women replied in low
tones, as if the words were spoken under her breath.

"We'll stop and rest awhile now," he said at last, and led the horse
to one side, where a level space made it possible for them to dismount
and stretch themselves on the ground to give