ng lifeless, the
occasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled. Vegetation
was scant, the sage-brush grew close and scrubby, even the brilliant
cactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone
group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls.
Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb
supplication. There was about them a something that made Judith come
closer to Peter as they passed them by. The night wind sang in their
leafless branches with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of a
barren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on them.

"Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand them?" She looked back. "Oh, I
wish they were cut down!"

Before them was the cabin, its ruined condition pitifully apparent even by
night. It had been deserted ten years before Jim brought his family to it.
Rumor said it was haunted. Grim stories were told of the death of a woman
who had come there with a man, and had not lived to go away with him. The
roof of the adjoining stable had fallen in, the bars of the corral were
missing. The house was dark but for a feeble light that glimmered in one
window, the beacon that had been lighted, night after night, against Jim's
coming. It added a further note of apprehension, peering through the dark,
still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye, keeping a long and unrewarded
vigil. Judith felt the consummation of the threatening tragedy after her
first glimpse of the sentinel trees. She could not explain, but her heart
cried, even as the wind in them had sung of death. Perhaps her mother's
spirit spoke to her, just as she had said, on that memorable drive, that
the Great Mystery spoke to his people in the earth, the sky, and the
frowning mountains.

"Peter"--she had slid from her horse and was clinging to his arm--"when it
happens, Peter, you will have no part in it?"

"It won't happen, Judith, if I can help it."

She kissed his hand as it held the loose reins.

"Lord, I am not worthy!" was the thought in his heart. He sat graven in
the saddle. Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart though he was, the unsought
kiss of trust gifted him with a self-reverence that would not soon forsake
him.

Judith was rapping on the door and calling to Alida not to be frightened.
And presently it was opened. Peter wanted to leave Judith, now that she
was safely at the end of her journey, but she would not hear of it till he
had ea