. Garvald will patiently pull it down."

"Oh, I grant that Andrew has the wisdom," said Ringan. "That's why him
and me's so well agreed. It's because we differ much, and so fit
together like opposite halves of an apple.... Is your traveller still
in the land of the living?" he asked Shalah.

But the Indian had slipped away from the fireside circle, and I saw him
without in the moonlight standing rigid on a knoll and gazing at the
skies.

* * * * *

Next day dawned cloudless, and Shalah and I spent it in a long
journey along the range. We kept to the highest parts, and at every
vantage-ground we scanned the glens for human traces. By this time I
had found my hill legs, and could keep pace even with the Indian's
swift stride. The ridge of mountains, you must know, was not a single
backbone, but broken up here and there by valleys into two and even
three ranges. This made our scouting more laborious, and prevented us
from getting the full value out of our high station. Mostly we kept in
cover, and never showed on a skyline. But we saw nothing to prove the
need of this stealth. Only the hawks wheeled, and the wild pigeons
crooned; the squirrels frisked among the branches; and now and then a
great deer would leap from its couch and hasten into the coverts.

But, though we got no news, that journey brought to me a revelation,
for I had my glimpse of Studd's Promised Land. It came to me early in
the day, as we halted in a little glade, gay with willowherb and
goldenrod, which hung on a shelf of the hills looking westwards. The
first streamers of morn had gone, the mists had dried up from the
valleys, and I found myself looking into a deep cleft and across at a
steep pine-clad mountain. Clearly the valley was split by this mountain
into two forks, and I could see only the cool depth of it and catch a
gleam of broken water a mile or two below. But looking more to the
north, I saw where the vale opened, and then I had a vision worthy of
the name by which Studd had baptized it. An immense green pasture land
ran out to the dim horizon. There were forests scattered athwart it,
and single great trees, and little ridges, too, but at the height where
we stood it seemed to the eye to be one verdant meadow as trim and
shapely as the lawn of a garden. A noble river, the child of many hill
streams, twined through it in shining links. I could see dots, which I
took to be herds of wild cattle grazing, but