an hideous. "Be
just! Be fair!" Dan Anderson's soul demanded of him; and as best he
saw justice and fairness to the woman he loved he answered for himself.

"Come," said the girl, gently, rousing herself from the lassitude
which suddenly assailed her, "we must go in."

His face was averted as he walked beside her. There was no word that
he could say. Accord being gone from all the universe, he could not
know that in her heart, humbled and shamed as it was, she understood
and in some part forgave.

"It has been very beautiful to-night," she said, as he turned back at
length from the door of Curly's house.

Choking, he left her. As he stumbled blindly back, over the
_arroyo_, there crossed on the heavens the long red line of a
shooting star. Dully he watched it, and for him it was the flaming
sword barring the gates of Eden.

Hours later--for sleep was not for him--Dan Anderson stood waiting for
the sun to rise over old Carrizo. Far off, along the pathway of the
morn, lay his former home, the States, the East, the fight, the
combat, and the grovelling. "No, not for me; not there!" he said,
conviction coming to him once more.

He turned then and glanced down the single street of Heart's Desire, a
street as straggling and purposeless as his own misdirected life--a
wavering lane through the poor habitations of a Land of Oblivion.
Longer he looked, and stronger the conviction grew. "No, no," he
said, clenching his hand; "not here for her--not here!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE CORPORATION AT HEART'S DESIRE

_This being the Story of a Parrot, Certain Twins, and a Pair of Candy
Legs_

Time wore on at Heart's Desire, uncalendared and unclocked. The sun
rose, passed through a sky impenetrably blue, and sank behind Baxter
Peak at evening. These were the main events of the day. All men had
apparently long ago forgotten the departure of the stage-coach that had
borne away at one voyaging both Eve and Eastern Capital. Eve had gone
forever, as she supposed, although Capital secretly knew full well that
it, at least, was coming back again.

The population shifted and changed, coming and going, as was the wont
of the land, but none questioned the man booted and spurred who rode
out of town or who came into town. Of late, however, certain booted
and bearded men wandered afoot over the mountain sides, doing strange
things with strange instruments. A railroad was about to cross the
country somewhere. Grave and m