Presbrey's naive admission, however, appeared to detach him from his
present surroundings, and with his massive head enveloped by a cloud
of smoke he lived in dreams.

Shefford respected his host's serene abstraction. Indeed, he was
grateful for silence. Not for many nights had the past impinged so
closely upon the present. The wound in his soul had not healed, and
to speak of himself made it bleed anew. Memory was too poignant; the
past was too close; he wanted to forget until he had toiled into the
heart of this forbidding wilderness--until time had gone by and he
dared to face his unquiet soul. Then he listened to the steadily
rising roar of the wind. How strange and hollow! That wind was
freighted with heavy sand, and he heard it sweep, sweep, sweep by in
gusts, and then blow with dull, steady blast against the walls. The
sound was provocative of thought. This moan and rush of wind was no
dream--this presence of his in a night-enshrouded and sand-besieged
house of the lonely desert was reality--this adventure was not one
of fancy. True indeed, then, must be the wild, strange story that
had led him hither. He was going on to seek, to strive, to find.
Somewhere northward in the broken fastnesses lay hidden a valley
walled in from the world. Would they be there, those lost fugitives
whose story had thrilled him? After twelve years would she be alive,
a child grown to womanhood in the solitude of a beautiful canyon?
Incredible! Yet he believed his friend's story and he indeed knew
how strange and tragic life was. He fancied he heard her voice on
the sweeping wind. She called to him, haunted him. He admitted the
improbability of her existence, but lost nothing of the persistent
intangible hope that drove him. He believed himself a man stricken
in soul, unworthy, through doubt of God, to minister to the people