sepulchers
of this valley are getting on with their soul-saving business. I--I
couldn't paint a thing to-day."

CHAPTER XX

IN THE FAR REACHES

Charlie Bryant's horse was a good one, far better than a rancher of
his class might have been expected to ride. It was a big, compact
animal with the long sloping pasterns of a horse bred for speed. It
possessed those wonderful rounded ribs, which seemed to run right up
to quarters let down like those of a racehorse. It was a beautiful
creature, and as it chafed under the gentle, restraining hand of its
rider its full veins stood out like ropes, and its shoulders and
flanks were a-lather of sweat.

They were traveling over a broken country a few miles up the valley.
There was no road of any sort, only cattle tracks, which, amid the
wild tangle of bush, made progress difficult and slow.

The man's eyes were brooding, and his effeminate face was overcast as
he rode. The wild scene about him went for nothing, even to his artist
eyes. His thoughts were full to the brim with things that held them
concentrated to the exclusion of all else. And, for all he thought,
or saw, or felt, of his surroundings, he might have been footing the
superheated plains of a tropical desert.

He was thinking of a woman. She was never really out of his thoughts,
and his heart was torn with the hopelessness of the passion consuming
him. No overshadowing threat could give him the least disquiet, no
physical fear ever seemed to touch him. But every thought of the one
woman whose image was forever before him could sear and lacerate his
heart almost beyond endurance.

He had no blame for her at any time. He had no protest to offer that
her love, the love of a wife for a husband, was utterly beyond his
reach. How could it be otherwise? He knew himself so well for what he
was, he had so subtle an appreciation of all he must lack in the eyes
of a big spirited, human woman, that, to his troubled mind, the
situation as it was had almost become inevitable.

Now as he rode, he thought, too, of his newly arrived brother, and the
hatefulness of personal comparison made him almost cringe beneath
their flagellations. Bill, so big of heart and body, so lacking in the
many abilities which go to make up the man in men's eyes, but which
count for so little in a woman's, so strong in the buoyancy and
fearlessness that was his. He felt he could almost hate him for these
things. Bill had not one ugly thought