comrade's burden. Wonderfully it came to him that he had also
lightened his own. From that hour it was not torment to think
of Nell. Walking with his comrade through the silent places, lying
beside him under the serene luminous light of the stars, Cameron
began to feel the haunting presence of invisible things that were
real to him--phantoms whispering peace. In the moan of the cool
wind, in the silken seep of sifting sand, in the distant rumble
of a slipping ledge, in the faint rush of a shooting star he
heard these phantoms of peace coming with whispers of the long
pain of men at the last made endurable. Even in the white noonday,
under the burning sun, these phantoms came to be real to him.
In the dead silence of the midnight hours he heard them breathing
nearer on the desert wind--nature's voices of motherhood, whispers
of God, peace in the solitude.



IV


There came a morning when the sun shone angry and red through a
dull, smoky haze.

"We're in for sandstorms," said Cameron.

They had scarcely covered a mile when a desert-wide, moaning, yellow
wall of flying sand swooped down upon them. Seeking shelter in
the lee of a rock, they waited, hoping the storm was only a squall,
such as frequently whipped across the open places. The moan
increased to a roar, and the dull red slowly dimmed, to disappear