ed. "You?"

The hand he held had slipped from his grasp. Through the dimness he saw
the man beside him rise to his feet. A moment he stood; then flung up
his arms above his head in a fierce gesture of renunciation that sent a
stab of recollection through Herne.

"I! I go to my people!" said the Prophet of the Wandis. "And you--will
go to yours."

It was final, and Herne knew it; yet his heart cried out within him for
the friend he had lost. Suddenly he found he could not bear it.

"Bobby! Bobby!" he burst forth impulsively. "Stop, man, stop and think!
There must be some other way. You can't--you shan't--go back!"

He hardly knew what he said, so great was his distress. The gulf was
widening, widening, and he was powerless. He knew that it could never be
bridged again.

"It's too big a forfeit," he urged very earnestly. "You can't do it. I
won't suffer it. For Betty's sake--Bobby, come back!"

And then, for the last time, he heard his friend's voice across the
ever-widening gulf.

"For Betty's sake, old chap, I am a dead man. Remember that! It's you
who must go back to her. Marry her, love her, make her--forget!"

For an instant those mummy hands rested upon him, held him, caressed
him; it was almost as if they blessed him. For an instant the veil was
lifted; they were comrades together. Then it fell....

There came a quiet movement, the sound of departing feet.

Herne turned and blindly searched the darkness. Across the gulf he cried
to his friend to return to him.

"Bobby, come back, lad, come back! We'll find some other way."

But there came no voice in answer, no sound of any sort. The desert had
received back its secret. He was alone....

IX

"Now, don't bother any more about me!" commanded Betty Derwent,
establishing herself with an air of finality on the edge of the trout
stream to which she had just suffered herself to be conducted by her
companion. "I am quite capable of baiting my own hook if necessary. You
run along up-stream and have some sport on your own account!"

The companion, a very young college man, looked decidedly blank over
this kindly dismissal. He had been manoeuvring to get Betty all to
himself for days, but, since everybody seemed to want her, it had been
no easy matter. And now, to his disgust, just as he was congratulating
himself upon having gained his end and secured a _tete-a-tete_ that,
with luck, might last for hours, he was coolly told to run along and
amuse hi