her to daughter. She was
somewhere beyond the dim horizon line. In those past lonely hours by
the campfire his fancy had tortured him with pictures of Nell. But his
remorseful and cruel fancy had lied to him. Nell had struggled upward
out of menacing depths. She had reconstructed a broken life. And now
she was fighting for the name and happiness of her child. Little Nell!
Cameron experienced a shuddering ripple in all his being--the physical
rack of an emotion born of a new and strange consciousness.

As Cameron gazed out over the blood-red, darkening desert suddenly the
strife in his soul ceased. The moment was one of incalculable change,
in which his eyes seemed to pierce the vastness of cloud and range, and
mystery of gloom and shadow--to see with strong vision the illimitable
space before him. He felt the grandeur of the desert, its simplicity,
its truth. He had learned at last the lesson it taught. No longer
strange was his meeting and wandering with Warren. Each had marched in
the steps of destiny; and as the lines of their fates had been
inextricably tangled in the years that were gone, so now their steps
had crossed and turned them toward one common goal. For years they had
been two men marching alone, answering to an inward driving search, and
the desert had brought them together. For years they had wandered alone
in silence and solitude, where the sun burned white all day and the
stars burned white all night, blindly following the whisper of a
spirit. But now Cameron knew that he was no longer blind, and in this
flash of revelation he felt that it had been given him to help Warren
with his burden.

He returned to camp trying to evolve a plan. As always at that long
hour when the afterglow of sunset lingered in the west, Warren plodded
to and fro in the gloom. All night Cameron lay awake thinking.

In the morning, when Warren brought the burros to camp and began
preparations for the usual packing, Cameron broke silence.

"Pardner, your story last night made me think. I want to tell you
something about myself. It's hard enough to be driven by sorrow for
one you've loved, as you've been driven; but to suffer sleepless and
eternal remorse for the ruin of one you've loved as I have
suffered--that is hell.... Listen. In my younger days--it seems long
now, yet it's not so many years--I was wild. I wronged the sweetest
and loveliest girl I ever knew. I went away not dreaming that any
disgrace m