gry for a hot meal. Since he had taken the trail of Mark
Thorn alone he had not kindled a fire. Now the food that he had
carried with him was done; he must turn back home for a fresh supply,
and a night's rest.

It did not matter much, anyway, he said, feeling the uselessness of
his life and strife in that place. It was a big and unfriendly land, a
hard and hopeless place for a man who tried to live in defiance of the
established order there. Why not leave it, with its despair and
heart-emptiness? The world was full enough of injustices elsewhere if
he cared to set his hand to right them.

But a true man did not run away under fire, nor a brave one block out
a task and then shudder and slink away, when he stood off and saw the
immensity of the thing that he had undertaken. Besides all these
considerations, which in themselves formed insuperable reasons against
retreat, there had been some big talk into the ear of Frances
Landcraft. There was no putting down what he had begun. His dream had
taken root there; it would be cruel cowardice to wrench it up.

He got up, the sun striking him on the face, from which the west wind
pressed back his hat brim as if to let the daylight see it. The dust
of his travels was on it, and the roughness of his new beard, and it
was harsh in some of its lines, and severe as an ashlar from the
craftsman's tool. But it was a man's face, with honor in it; the sun
found no weakness there, no shame concealed under the sophistries and
wiles by which men beguile the world.

Macdonald looked away across the valley, past the white ranchhouse,
beyond the slow river which came down from the northwest in toilsome
curves, whose gray shores and bars were yellow in that sunlight as the
sands of famed Pactolus. His breast heaved with the long inspiration
which flared his thin nostrils like an Arab's scenting rain; he
revived with a new vigor as the freedom of the plains met his eyes and
made them glad. That was his place, his land; its troubles were his to
bear, its peace his to glean when it should ripen. It was his
inheritance; it was his place of rest. The lure of that country had a
deep seat in his heart; he loved it for its perils and its pains. It
was like a sweetheart to bind and call him back. A man makes his own
Fortunate Isles, as that shaggy old gray poet knew so well.

For a moment Mark Thorn was forgotten as Macdonald repeated, in low
voice above his breath:

Lo! These are the isles o