something breathed to him, telling him when he was alone. He need
not have looked at the dark, still face beside him.

Another face haunted Cameron's--a woman's face. It was there in
the white moonlit shadows; it drifted in the darkness beyond; it
softened, changed to that of a young girl, sweet, with the same
dark, haunting eyes of her mother. Cameron prayed to that nameless
thing within him, the spirit of something deep and mystical as
life. He prayed to that nameless thing outside, of which the rocks
and the sand, the spiked cactus and the ragged lava, the endless
waste, with its vast star-fired mantle, were but atoms. He prayed
for mercy to a woman--for happiness to her child. Both mother and
daughter were close to him then. Time and distance were annihilated.
He had faith--he saw into the future. The fateful threads of the
past, so inextricably woven with his error, wound out their tragic
length here in this forlorn desert.

Cameron then took a little tin box from his pocket, and, opening
it, removed a folded certificate. He had kept a pen, and now he
wrote something upon the paper, and in lieu of ink he wrote with
blood. The moon afforded him enough light to see; and, having
replaced the paper, he laid the little box upon a shelf of rock.
It would remain there unaffected by dust, moisture, heat, time.
How long had those painted images been there clear and sharp on
the dry stone walls? There were no trails in that desert, and
always there were incalculable changes. Cameron saw this mutable
mood of nature--the sands would fly and seep and carve and bury;
the floods would dig and cut; the ledges would weather in the heat
and rain; the avalanches would slide; the cactus seeds would roll
in the wind to catch in a niche and split the soil with thirsty