possibly we may strike a trail."

She staggered to her feet, gripping his shoulder, and swaying a little
from weakness, then, holding aside her hair, gazed long in the
direction he pointed.

"I fairly shake from hunger," she exclaimed, almost angrily, "and am
terribly tired and sore, but I reckon I can make it if I 've got to."

There was nothing more said between them. Like two automatons, they
started off across the parched grass, the heat waves rising and falling
as they stumbled forward. Neither realized until then how thoroughly
that hard climb up the rocks, the strain of continued peril, and the
long abstinence from food had sapped their strength, yet to remain
where they were meant certain death; all hope found its centre amid
those distant beckoning trees. Mechanically the girl gathered back her
straying tresses, and tied them with a rag torn from her frayed skirt.
Hampton noted silently how heavy and sunken her eyes were; he felt a
dull pity, yet could not sufficiently arouse himself from the lethargy
of exhaustion to speak. His body seemed a leaden weight, his brain a
dull, inert mass; nothing was left him but an unreasoning purpose, the
iron will to press on across that desolate plain, which already reeled
and writhed before his aching eyes.

No one can explain later how such deeds are ever accomplished; how the
tortured soul controls physical weakness, and compels strained sinews
to perform the miracle of action when all ambition has died. Hampton
surely must have both seen and known, for he kept his direction, yet
never afterwards did he regain any clear memory of it. Twice she fell
heavily, and the last time she lay motionless, her face pressed against