him of the air he
had smelled in dry caves under cliffs. He reached a point from where he
saw a meadow dotted with red-and-white-spotted cattle and little black
burros. There were many of them. And he remembered with a start the
agony of toil and peril Venters had endured bringing the progenitors of
this stock into the valley. What a strange, wild, beautiful story it
all was! But a story connected with this valley could not have been
otherwise.

Beyond the meadow, on the other side of the valley, extended the forest,
and that ended in the rising bench of thicket, which gave place to green
slope and mossy terrace of sharp-tipped spruces--and all this led the
eye irresistibly up to the red wall where a vast, dark, wonderful cavern
yawned, with its rust-colored streaks of stain on the wall, and the
queer little houses of the cliff-dwellers, with their black, vacant,
silent windows speaking so weirdly of the unknown past.

Shefford passed a place where the ground had been cultivated, but not
as recently as the last six months. There was a scant shock of corn and
many meager standing stalks. He became aware of a low, whining hum and a
fragrance overpowering in its sweetness. And there round another corner
of wall he came upon an orchard all pink and white in blossom and
melodious with the buzz and hum of innumerable bees.

He crossed a little stream that had been dammed, went along a pond, down
beside an irrigation-ditch that furnished water to orchard and vineyard,
and from there he strode into a beautiful cove between two jutting
corners of red wall. It was level and green and the spruces stood
gracefully everywhere. Beyond their dark trunks he saw caves in the
wall.

Suddenly the fragrance of blossom was overwhelmed by the stronger
fragrance of smoke from a wood fire. Swiftly he strode under the
spruces. Quail fluttered before him as tame as chickens. Big gray
rabbits scarcely moved out of his way. The branches above him were full
of mockingbirds. And then--there before him stood three figures.

Fay Larkin was held close to the side of a magnificent woman,
barbarously clad in garments made of skins and pieces of blanket. Her
face worked in noble emotion. Shefford seemed to see the ghost of that
fair beauty Venters had said was Jane Withersteen's. Her hair was
gray. Near her stood a lean, stoop-shouldered man whose long hair was
perfectly white. His gaunt face was bare of beard. It had strange,
sloping, sad lines. A