throb with life, only to die. It was a
terrible ordeal for him to stand along and realize that he was only a
man facing eternity. But that was what gave him strength to endure.
Somehow he was a part of it all, some atom in that vastness, somehow
necessary to an inscrutable purpose, something indestructible in that
desolate world of ruin and death and decay, something perishable and
changeable and growing under all the fixity of heaven. In that
endless, silent hall of desert there was a spirit; and Cameron felt
hovering near him what he imagined to be phantoms of peace.

He returned to camp and sought his comrade.

"I reckon we're two of a kind," he said. "It was a woman who drove me
into the desert. But I come to remember. The desert's the only place
I can do that."

"Was she your wife?" asked the elder man.

"No."

A long silence ensued. A cool wind blew up the canyon, sifting the
sand through the dry sage, driving away the last of the lingering heat.
The campfire wore down to a ruddy ashen heap.

"I had a daughter," said Cameron's comrade. "She lost her mother at
birth. And I--I didn't know how to bring up a girl. She was pretty
and gay. It was the--the old story."

His words were peculiarly significant to Cameron. They distressed him.
He had been wrapped up in his remorse. If ever in the past he had
thought of any one connected with the girl he had wronged he had long
forgotten. But the consequences of such wrong were far-reaching. They
struck at the roots of a home. Here in the desert he was confronted by
the spectacle of a splendid man, a father, wasting his life because he
could not forget--because there was nothing left to live for. Cameron
understood better now why his comrade was drawn by the desert.

"Well, tell me more?" asked Cameron, earnestly.

"It was the old, old story. My girl was pretty and free. The young
bucks ran after her. I guess she did not run away from them. And I was
away a good deal--working in another town. She was in love with a wild
fellow. I knew nothing of it till too late. He was engaged to marry
her. But he didn't come back. And when the disgrace became plain to
all, my girl left home. She went West. After a while I heard from
her. She was well--working--living for her baby. A long time passed.
I had no ties. I drifted West. Her lover had also gone West. In
those days everybody went West. I trailed him, intending to kill him.
But I lost his t