old me a name--except Saint George. I don't--know him--except his
voice. I never--saw his face--in the light!"

. . . . . . . . . . .

Fay Larkin ended her story. Toward its close Shefford had grown
involuntarily restless, and when her last tragic whisper ceased all his
body seemed shaken with a terrible violence of his joy. He strode to and
fro in the dark shadow of the stone. The receding blood left him cold,
with a pricking, sickening sensation over his body, but there seemed
to be an overwhelming tide accumulating deep in his breast--a tide of
passion and pain. He dominated the passion, but the ache remained. And
he returned to the quiet figure on the stone.

"Fay Larkin!" he exclaimed, with a deep breath of relief that the secret
was disclosed. "So you're not a wife!... You're free! Thank Heaven! But
I felt it was sacrifice. I knew there had been a crime. For crime it is.
You child! You can't understand what crime. Oh, almost I wish you and
Jane and Lassiter had never been found. But that's wrong of me. One year
of agony--that shall not ruin your life. Fay, I will take you away."

"Where?" she whispered.

"Away from this Mormon country--to the East," he replied, and he spoke
of what he had known, of travel, of cities, of people, of happiness
possible for a young girl who had spent all her life hidden between the
narrow walls of a silent, lonely valley--he spoke swiftly and eloquently
till he lost his breath.

There was an instant of flashing wonder and joy on her white face, and
then the radiance paled, the glow died. Her soul was the darker for that
one strange, leaping glimpse of a glory not for such as she.

"I must stay here," she said, shudderingly.

"Fay!--How strange to SAY Fay aloud to YOU!--Fay, do you know the way to
Surprise Valley?"

"I don't know where it is, but I could go straight to it," she replied.

"Take me there. Show me your beautiful valley. Let me see where you ran
and climbed and spent so many lonely years."

"Ah, how I'd love to! But I dare not. And why should you want me to take
you? We can run and climb here."

"I want to--I mean to save Jane Withersteen and Lassiter," he declared.

She uttered a little cry of pain. "Save them?"

"Yes, save them. Get them out of the valley, take them out of the
country, far away where they and YOU--"

"But I can't go," she wailed. "I'm afraid. I'm bound. It CAN'T be
broken. If I dared--if I tried to go they would catch me. They would
han