sweet were the desert herbs under their crushing hooves! Ere the shadow
of the acacia measured less than its height they came upon a spring of
silver water, and Ruark leaped from his steed, and Bhanavar from hers,
and they performed their ablutions by that spring, and ate and drank, and
watered their steeds. While they were there Bhanavar lifted her eyes to
Ruark, and said, 'Whither takest thou me, O my Chief?'

His brow was stern, and he answered, 'Surely to the dwelling of thy
tribe.'

Then she wept, and pulled her veil close, murmuring, ''Tis well!'

They spake no further, and pursued their journey toward the mountains and
across the desert that was as a sea asleep in the blazing heat, and the
sun till his setting threw no shade upon the sands bigger than what was
broad above them. By the beams of the growing moon they entered the
first gorge of the mountains. Here they relaxed the swiftness of their
pace, picking their way over broken rocks and stunted shrubs, and the
mesh of spotted creeping plants; all around them in shadow a freshness of
noisy rivulets and cool scents of flowers, asphodel and rose blooming in
plots from the crevices of the crags. These, as the troop advanced,
wound and widened, gradually receding, and their summits, which were
silver in the moonlight, took in the distance a robe of purple, and the
sides of the mountains were rounded away in purple beyond a space of
emerald pasture. Now, Ruark beheld the heaviness of Bhanavar, and that
she drooped in her seat, and he halted her by a cave at the foot of the
mountains, browed with white broom. Before it, over grass and cresses,
ran a rill, a branch from others, larger ones, that went hurrying from
the heights to feed the meadows below, and Bhanavar dipped her hand in
the rill, and thought, 'I am no more as thou, rill of the mountain, but a