appeared impassable. It was bridged finally by a cedar trunk, which
Hampton wrenched from out its rocky foothold, and the two crept
cautiously forward, to emerge where the sunlight rested golden at the
summit. They sank face downward in the short grass, barely conscious
that they had finally won their desperate passage.

Slowly Hampton succeeded in uplifting his tired body and his reeling
head, until he could sit partially upright and gaze unsteadily about.
The girl yet remained motionless at his feet, her thick hair, a mass of
red gold in the sunshine, completely concealing her face, her slender
figure quivering to sobs of utter exhaustion. Before them stretched
the barren plain, brown, desolate, drear, offering in all its wide
expanse no hopeful promise of rescue, no slightest suggestion even of
water, excepting a fringe of irregular trees, barely discernible
against the horizon. That lorn, deserted waste, shimmering beneath the
sun-rays, the heat waves already becoming manifest above the
rock-strewn surface, presented a most depressing spectacle. With hand
partially shading his aching eyes from the blinding glare, the man
studied its every exposed feature, his face hardening again into lines
of stern determination. The girl stirred from her position, flinging
back her heavy hair with one hand, and looking up into his face with
eyes that read at once his disappointment.

"Have--have you any water left?" she asked at last, her lips parched
and burning as if from fever.

He shook the canteen dangling forgotten at his side. "There may be a
few drops," he said, handing it to her, although scarcely removing his
fixed gaze from off that dreary plain. "We shall be obliged to make
those trees yonder; there ought to be water there in plenty, and