they had lain in the same cradle and grown up under the same rooftree.

There was something about the gray pony, with the look of a captive in
its eye, a wildness in subjection, like the girl at Tralee--the girl
suddenly come to be woman, with her free soul born into understanding,
yet who was as much a captive as though in prison, and guarded by a
warder with a long beard, a carnivorous head, and boots greased with
tallow.

Since they had parted, the day after Li Choo had averted a domestic
"scene" or tragedy, the search had gone on by the Mounted Police-"the
Riders of the Plains"--for the men who had attempted to rob Mazarine, and
to put Orlando out of action by a bullet. Suspicion had been directed
against the McMahons, but Joel Mazarine had declared that it was not the
McMahons who had attacked him, although they were masked. There was
nothing strange in that, because, as the Inspector of the Riders said
"That lot is too fly to do the job themselves; you bet they paid others
to do it."

Orlando had no wish to see the criminals caught or punished. Somehow,
secretly, he looked upon the assault and his wound as a blessing. It had
brought him near to his other self, his mate in the scheme of things.
There was something almost pagan and primitive, something near to the
very beginning of things in what these two felt for each other. It was
as though they really belonged to a world of lovers that "lived before
the god of Love was born."

As Orlando sat watching the sunset, Louise's last words to him, "Oh,
Orlando!" kept ringing in his ears. He thought of what had happened
that very morning before he started for the hills. Soon after daybreak,