d. A crack from a hoof on a stone rang like
a hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the croak of a frog--the
only living creature he had so far noted in the canyon--was a weird and
melancholy thing.

Fay rode close to him, and his heart seemed to rejoice when she spoke,
when she showed how she wanted to be near him, yet, try as he might,
he could not respond. His speech to her--what little there was--did
not come spontaneously. And he suffered a remorse that he could not be
honestly natural to her. Then he would drive away the encroaching gloom,
trusting that a little time would dispel it.

"We are deeper down than Surprise Valley," said Fay.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"Here are the pink and yellow sago-lilies. You remember we went once to
find the white ones? I have found white lilies in Surprise Valley, but
never any pink or yellow."

Shefford had seen flowers all along the green banks, but he had not
marked the lilies. Here he dismounted and gathered several. They were
larger than the white ones of higher altitudes, of the same exquisite
beauty and fragility, of such rare pink and yellow hues as he had never
seen. He gave the flowers to Fay.

"They bloom only where it's always summer," she said.

That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the summer canyon.
They stood up everywhere starlike out of the green. It was impossible
to prevent the mustangs treading them under hoof. And as the canyon
deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume to the
brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green sky
star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself in the
banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and great clusters
of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming buck-rush; the
rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of cactus; ledges were
green with shining moss that sparkled with little white flowers. The hum
of bees filled the air.

But by and by this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost
level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and
the clumps of cotton-woods, the shelving caverns and the bulging
walls--these features gradually were lost, and Nonnezoshe Boco began to
deepen in bare red and white stone steps, the walls sheered away from
one another, breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher and
higher, and there began to be manifested a dark and solemn concordance
with the nature t