e the
weird imaginings of some evil dream than inanimate things
of clay. And over all brooded the mysterious dusk and
the silence--the silence as of death that had been from
the beginning, and which haunted one like a living
presence. Only perhaps now and again there was a peculiar
and clearly-defined, trumpet-toned sound caused by the
outstretched wing of a great hawk as it swooped down to
seize its prey. It was the very embodiment of desolation.
It might well have been some dead lunar landscape in
which for aeons no living thing had stirred.

But Dorothy had other things to think of. Her position
was now seemingly more perilous than before. It was so
hard to think that they had all been so near deliverance,
and, in fact, had given themselves over entirely to hope,
and then had been so ruthlessly disappointed.

But there had been compensations. Putting on one side
the shedding of blood, for which nothing could compensate,
there was that new interest which had sprung into glorious
life within her, and had become part of her being--her
love for the man who had more than once put himself in
the power of the enemy so that she and her father might
be saved. Yes, that was something very wonderful and
beautiful indeed.

When the moon got up the party was reformed, and they
started out again. In the pale moonlight the freaks of
Nature's handiwork were more fantastic than ever, and
here and there tall, strangely-fashioned boulders of clay
took on the semblance of threatening, half-human monsters
meditating an attack.

Dorothy had noticed by the stars that the party had
changed its direction. They were now heading due north.
With the exception of one short halt they travelled all
through the night, and in the early grey dawn of the
morning came out upon a great plain of drifting sand that
looked for all the world like an old ocean bed stretching
on and on interminably. It was the dangerous shifting
sands, which the Indians generally avoided, as it contained
spots where, it was said, both man and horse disappeared
if they dared to put foot on it. But Poundmaker's lieutenant
was not without some measure of skill and daring, and
piloted them between the troughs of the waste with unerring
skill.

When the sun gained power in the heavens and a light
breeze sprang up, a strange thing took place. The face
of the wave-like heights and hollows began to move. The
tiny grains of sand were everywhere in motion, and actually
g