rs to the sounding thing. A long time she rode so. And then
she wept because she was alone and cold and dying and unsuccored by the
only one who could have comforted her.

"I would never, never have left _you_!" she called back toward Ewing,
with the first reproach she had ever given him. Her voice had a broken
sweetness like that of a child speaking through tears. "I'd never have
let you be so cold! I'd have stayed--stayed by you--warmed
you--comforted you!"

But after a little her tears ceased, as an unpitied child wears out its
crying, and her eyes closed again as she laughed at her own sad lack of
reason.

When she opened her eyes again she gave a little gasping cry of relief.
The black of the night had faded to gray. A dull, dark, opaque gray it
was, but ghosts of the land already bulked massively through it;
shrouded, vague shapes without line. And the spirit of her purpose
quickened as she looked.

Slowly the mist lightened, still opaque but silver now, and presently
she saw the murky face of a nearby rock and could trace the cedar that
twisted outward from its summit. They were amazing shapes to her, so
long had she seemed to live in the dark, and she named them over,
wonderingly--"A tree, a rock--a rock, a tree!"

Again the question struck at her: "You want to do the hardest thing?"

"I _must_ do the hardest thing--it only happens that I also wish to."

"Is there nothing harder than what you are doing?"

Again she shut her eyes and set her lips, but the voice came with
merciless insistence.

"_What_ would be harder than dying?"

Then she threw back her head and challenged the voice.

"_Living!_ To live would be harder." She made the confession without
flinching, even with a laugh, and a weight dropped from her.

"Then you are not doing the hardest thing--not doing it--not doing the
hardest thing!"

She coolly scanned the descending bed of a creek that the trail now
crossed. The ravine widened below, and she saw that an ascent would be
practicable farther down. It was time, then, to leave the trail. If the
impossible should happen, if by some chance or trick of woodcraft they
tracked her all the miles of her night-long ride, they must lose her
here.

She turned Cooney down the shallow stream with a furtive smile of pride
in her own craft. He splashed through the water, stumbling over the
submerged bowlders, but always recovering himself, and picking a sure
way over the creek bed.

The cool gr