own. Directly opposite the butte rose a short
slope, forming the other bank of the river. From the crest of the slope
began a plain that stretched for many miles, merging at the horizon into
some pine-clad foothills. Behind the foothills were the mountains, their
snow peaks shimmering in a white sky--remote, mysterious, seeming like
guardians of another world. The chill of the mountains contrasted sharply
with the slumberous luxuriance and color of the plains.

Miles of grass, its green but slightly dulled with a thin covering of
alkali dust, spread over the plain; here and there a grove of trees rose,
it seemed, to break the monotony of space. To the right the river doubled
sharply, the farther bank fringed with alder and aspen, their tall stalks
nodding above the nondescript river weeds; the near bank a continuing wall
of painted buttes--red, picturesque, ragged, thrusting upward and outward
over the waters of the river. On the left was a stretch of broken country.
Mammoth boulders were strewn here; weird rocks arose in inconceivably
grotesque formations; lava beds, dull and gray, circled the bald knobs of
some low hills. Above it all swam the sun, filling the world with a clear,
white light. It made a picture whose beauty might have impressed the most
unresponsive. Yet, though Sheila was looking upon the picture, her
thoughts were dwelling upon another.

This other picture was not so beautiful, and a vague unrest gripped
Sheila's heart as she reviewed it, carefully going over each gloomy
detail. It was framed in the rain and the darkness of a yesterday. There
was a small clearing there--a clearing in a dense wood beside a river--the
same river which she could have seen below her now, had she looked. In the
foreground was a cabin. She entered the cabin and stood beside a table
upon which burned a candle. A man stood beside the table also--a
reckless-eyed man, holding a heavy revolver. Another man stood there,
too--a man of God. While Sheila watched the man's lips opened; she could
hear the words that came through them--she would never forget them:

"To have and to hold from this day forth ... till death do you part...."

It was not a dream, it was the picture of an actual occurrence. She saw
every detail of it. She could hear her own protests, her threats, her
pleadings; she lived over again her terror as she had crouched in the bunk
until the dawn.

The man had not molested her, had not even spoken to her after th