y--"

A new mood was upon him. A lassitude as of remorse appeared to relax
him, body and mind. An hour later he and I sat in the glorious flood
of the light of the moon of Heart's Desire, and we fell silent, as was
the way of men in that place. At length Dan Anderson turned his face
to the top of old Carrizo, the restful, the impassive. He gazed long
without speaking, as though he plainly saw something there at the
mountain top.

"Listen," he whispered to me, a moment later, and his eyes did not
quite keep back the tears. "She's there--the Goddess. The Law has
come to Heart's Desire. May God forgive me! Why could we not have
stayed content?"

But little did Dan Anderson foresee that day how swiftly was to come
further ruin for the kingdom of oblivion which we thought that we had
found.

"There'll be _women_ next!" I said to him bitterly; though this was a
vague threat of a thing impossible.

His reply was a look more than half frightened.

"Don't!" he said.

CHAPTER V

EDEN AT HEART'S DESIRE

_This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding
Loneliness of Adam_

Two months had passed since the wedding of Curly and the Littlest Girl,
and nothing further had happened in the way of change. The man from
Philadelphia had not come, and, to the majority of the population of
Heart's Desire at least, the railroad to the camp remained a thing as
far distant as ever in the future. Life went on, spent in the open for
the most part, and in silent thoughtfulness by choice. Blackman, J.
P., now languished in desuetude among the fallen remnants of an
erstwhile promising structure of the law; and there being no further
occupation for the members of the bar, the latter customarily spent
much of the day sitting in the sun.

"You might look several times at me," said Dan Andersen one day,
without preface or provocation, "and yet not read all my past in these
fair lineaments."

This seemed unworthy of notice. A man's past was a subject tabooed in
Heart's Desire. Besides, the morning was already so warm that we were
glad to seek the shade of an adobe wall. Conversation languished. Dan
Anderson absent-mindedly rolled a _cigarrillo_ with one hand, his gaze
the while fixed on the horizon, on which we could see the faint loom of
the Bonitos, toothed upon the blue sky, fifty miles away. His mind
might also have been fifty miles away, as he gazed vaguely. There was
nothing to do. There was on