h other in the same
tireless trot. The woods and underbrush were full of them; all moving
on, as he had moved, in a line parallel with the vanishing coach.
Sometimes through the openings a bared painted limb, a crest of
feathers, or a strip of gaudy blanket was visible, but nothing more.
And yet only a few hundred yards away stretched the dusky, silent
plain--vacant of sound or motion!

Meanwhile the Sage Wood and Pine Barren stage coach, profoundly
oblivious--after the manner of all human invention--of everything but
its regular function, toiled dustily out of the higher plain and
began the grateful descent of a wooded canyon, which was, in fact, the
culminating point of the depression, just described, along which the
shadowy procession was slowly advancing, hardly a mile in the rear and
flank of the vehicle. Miss Julia Cantire, who had faced the dust volleys
of the plain unflinchingly, as became a soldier's daughter, here stood
upright and shook herself--her pretty head and figure emerging like a
goddess from the enveloping silver cloud. At least Mr. Boyle, relegated
to the back seat, thought so--although her conversation and attentions
had been chiefly directed to the driver and mail agent. Once, when he
had light-heartedly addressed a remark to her, it had been received
with a distinct but unpromising politeness that had made him desist
from further attempts, yet without abatement of his cheerfulness, or
resentment of the evident amusement his two male companions got out
of his "snub." Indeed, it is to be feared that Miss Julia had certain
prejudices of position, and may have thought that a "drummer"--or
commercial traveler--was no more fitting company for the daughter of
a major than an ordinary peddler. But it was more probable that Mr.
Boyle's reputation as a humorist--a teller of funny stories and a boon
companion of men--was inconsistent with the feminine ideal of high and
exalted manhood. The man who "sets the table in a roar" is apt to
be secretly detested by the sex, to say nothing of the other obvious
reasons why Juliets do not like Mercutios!

For some such cause as this Dick Boyle was obliged to amuse himself
silently, alone on the back seat, with those liberal powers of
observation which nature had given him. On entering the canyon he had
noticed the devious route the coach had taken to reach it, and had
already invented an improved route which should enter the depression at
the point where the India