emed to float between the walls; long,
red rays, where the sun shone through notch or crack in the rim, split
the darker spaces; deep down at the floor the forest darkened, the strip
of aspen paled, the meadow turned gray; and all under the shelves and in
the great caverns a purple gloom deepened. Then the sun set. And swiftly
twilight was there below while day lingered above. On the opposite wall
the fire died and the stone grew cold.

A canyon night-hawk voiced his lonely, weird, and melancholy cry, and it
seemed to pierce and mark the silence.

A pale star, peering out of a sky that had begun to turn blue, marked
the end of twilight. And all the purple shadows moved and hovered and
changed till, softly and mysteriously, they embraced black night.

Beautiful, wild, strange, silent Surprise Valley! Shefford saw it before
and beneath him, a dark abyss now, the abode of loneliness. He imagined
faintly what was in Fay Larkin's heart. For the last time she had seen
the sun set there and night come with its dead silence and sweet mystery
and phantom shadows, its velvet blue sky and white trains of stars.

He, who had dreamed and longed and searched, found that the hour had
been incalculable for him in its import.

XVII. THE TRAIL TO NONNEZOSHE

When Shefford awoke next morning and sat up on his bed of pinyon boughs
the dawn had broken cold with a ruddy gold brightness under the trees.
Nas Ta Bega and Lassiter were busy around a camp-fire; the mustangs were
haltered near by; Jane Withersteen combed out her long, tangled tresses
with a crude wooden comb; and Fay Larkin was not in sight. As she
had been missing from the group at sunset, so she was now at sunrise.
Shefford went out to take his last look at Surprise Valley.

On the evening before the valley had been a place of dusky red veils and
purple shadows, and now it was pink-walled, clear and rosy and green
and white, with wonderful shafts of gold slanting down from the notched
eastern rim. Fay stood on the promontory, and Shefford did not break the
spell of her silent farewell to her wild home. A strange emotion abided
with him and he knew he would always, all his life, regret leaving
Surprise Valley.

Then the Indian called.

"Come, Fay," said Shefford, gently.

And she turned away with dark, haunted eyes and a white, still face.

The somber Indian gave a silent gesture for Shefford to make haste.
While they had breakfast the mustangs were saddled an