something
that was gone. How many years had passed since the cliff-dwellers gazed
out across the beautiful valley as he was gazing now? How long had it
been since women ground grain in those polished holes? What time had
rolled by since men of an unknown race lived, loved, fought, and died
there? Had an enemy destroyed them? Had disease destroyed them, or only
that greatest destroyer--time? Venters saw a long line of blood-red
hands painted low down upon the yellow roof of stone. Here was strange
portent, if not an answer to his queries. The place oppressed him. It
was light, but full of a transparent gloom. It smelled of dust and musty
stone, of age and disuse. It was sad. It was solemn. It had the look
of a place where silence had become master and was now irrevocable and
terrible and could not be broken. Yet, at the moment, from high up in
the carved crevices of the arch, floated down the low, strange wail of
wind--a knell indeed for all that had gone.

Venters, sighing, gathered up an armful of pottery, such pieces as he
thought strong enough and suitable for his own use, and bent his steps
toward camp. He mounted the terrace at an opposite point to which he
had left. He saw the girl looking in the direction he had gone. His
footsteps made no sound in the deep grass, and he approached close
without her being aware of his presence. Whitie lay on the ground near
where she sat, and he manifested the usual actions of welcome, but the
girl did not notice them. She seemed to be oblivious to everything near
at hand. She made a pathetic figure drooping there, with her sunny hair
contrasting so markedly with her white, wasted cheeks and her hands
listlessly clasped and her little bare feet propped in the framework of
the rude seat. Venters could have sworn and laughed in one breath at the
idea of the connection between this girl and Oldring's Masked Rider. She
was the victim of more than accident of fate--a victim to some deep
plot the mystery of which burned him. As he stepped forward with a
half-formed thought that she was absorbed in watching for his return,
she turned her head and saw him. A swift start, a change rather than
rush of blood under her white cheeks, a flashing of big eyes that fixed
their glance upon him, transformed her face in that single instant of
turning, and he knew she had been watching for him, that his return was
the one thing in her mind. She did not smile; she did not flush; she
did not look glad.