alking their horses past the house, which was dark, careful
not to wake Vesta. But their care went for nothing; she was not in bed.
Around the turn of the long porch they saw her standing in the
moonlight, looking across the river into the lonely night. It seemed as
if she stood in communion with distant places, to which she sent her
longing out of a bondage that she could not flee.

"She looks lonesome," Taterleg said. "Well, I ain't a-goin' to go and
pet and console her. I'm done takin' chances."

Lambert understood as never before how melancholy that life must be for
her. She turned as they passed, her face clear in the bright moonlight.
Taterleg swept off his hat with the grand air that took him so far with
the ladies, Lambert saluting with less extravagance.

Vesta waved her hand in acknowledgment, turning again to her watching
over the vast, empty land, as if she waited the coming of somebody who
would quicken her life with the cheer that it wanted so sadly that calm
summer night.

Lambert felt an unusual restlessness that night--no mood over him for
his bed. It seemed, in truth, that a man would be wasting valuable hours
of life by locking his senses up in sleep. He put his horse away, sated
with the comedy of Taterleg's adventure, and not caring to pursue it
further. To get away from the discussion of it that he knew Taterleg
would keep going as long as there was an ear open to hear him, he walked
to the near-by hilltop to view the land under this translating spell.

This was the hilltop from which he had ridden down to interfere between
Vesta and Nick Hargus. With that adventure he had opened his account of
trouble in the Bad Lands, an account that was growing day by day, the
final balancing of which he could not foresee.

From where he stood, the house was dark and lonely as an abandoned
habitation. It seemed, indeed, that bright and full of youthful light as
Vesta Philbrook was, she was only one warm candle in the gloom of this
great and melancholy monument of her father's misspent hopes. Before
she could warm it into life and cheerfulness, it would encroach upon her
with its chilling gloom, like an insidious cold drift of sand,
smothering her beauty, burying her quick heart away from the world for
which it longed, for evermore.

It would need the noise of little feet across those broad, empty,
lonesome porches to wake the old house; the shouting and laughter and
gleam of merry eyes that childhood brin