im while he talked.

"Mr. Bond, the Colonel thinks I oughtn't to go with you. He wants me to
wait for the ambulance. But he's fooling--he's fooling. He means me to
stay behind, and I know it. So I've come to say that I look to you to
find mother and Alice. Tell them to hurry. For I can't stand
this--long." The grey head dropped to the trooper's shoulder.

"Jamieson," said the evangelist, "if God spares my life I shall meet
your mother and sister. I shall cheer them and help them. I believe I
shall save them. If they are given to me, I shall come straight back. Do
not go with the command. Stay behind, Jamieson. I'll bring them to you."

"I'll stay, then. I believe----"

The preacher smiled down, and to every side. Then he clucked to
Shadrach. The tugs straightened. The wagon rolled slowly out of the
post.

The sunlight shone upon the green box and the red wheels, and upon the
staunch old driver, who never once looked back. Above him, emblem of the
sublime Martyr, sagged the high board cross.

CHAPTER XXI

A MEETING BY THE FORD

Under the cottonwoods that shadowed the landing-place, the clematis
trailed its tufts of fluffy grey; a cluster of wind-flowers nodded,
winking their showy blue eyes; birds whisked about to fetch straws and
scraps for their building; and the grass, bright green, but stubby, wore
a changing spatterwork of sun and leaf.

Marylyn let drop her bonnet and the cow-horn that hung by a thong to her
wrist. Then, with folded hands, she looked up and around her, sniffing
the warm air in delight. The Texas home had never offered such a lovely
retreat. There, the arid _mesa_ had grown thorny mesquite, scraggled
cypress, or stunted live-oak for a shade; sand had whirled ceaselessly
before a high, hot wind; no flowers had bloomed but the pale toadflax
and the prickly-pear; and beside the salt lakes of that almost waterless
waste had nested only the vulture.

But this! It was like the blossom-strewn plain that burst upon them as,
desert-wearied, they travelled into Central Texas; like the glimpses of
April woodland in the Upper and Lower Cross Timbers. It made generous
return for the long, merciless winter; more--in one glance, in one
breath, it swept away a whole winter of hateful memories!

She caught up bonnet and horn and chose a seat close to the river.
Before her was a gap in the knotted grapevine heaps that clung along
the brink of the bank; through it, veiled only by some tendrils tha