“It’s too big a forfeit,” he urged very earnestly.  “You can’t do it.  I won’t suffer it.  For Betty’s sake—­Bobby, come back!”

And then, for the last time, he heard his friend’s voice across the ever-widening gulf.

“For Betty’s sake, old chap, I am a dead man.  Remember that!  It’s you who must go back to her.  Marry her, love her, make her—­forget!”

For an instant those mummy hands rested upon him, held him, caressed him; it was almost as if they blessed him.  For an instant the veil was lifted; they were comrades together.  Then it fell....

There came a quiet movement, the sound of departing feet.

Herne turned and blindly searched the darkness.  Across the gulf he cried to his friend to return to him.

“Bobby, come back, lad, come back!  We’ll find some other way.”

But there came no voice in answer, no sound of any sort.  The desert had received back its secret.  He was alone....

IX

“Now, don’t bother any more about me!” commanded Betty Derwent, establishing herself with an air of finality on the edge of the trout stream to which she had just suffered herself to be conducted by her companion.  “I am quite capable of baiting my own hook if necessary.  You run along up-stream and have some sport on your own account!”

The companion, a very young college man, looked decidedly blank over this kindly dismissal.  He had been manoeuvring to get Betty all to himself for days, but, since everybody seemed to want her, it had been no easy matter.  And now, to his disgust, just as he was congratulating himself upon having gained his end and secured a tete-a-tete that, with luck, might last for hours, he was coolly told to run along and amuse himself while she fished in solitude.

“I say, you know,” he protested, “that’s rather hard lines.”

“Don’t be absurd!” said Betty.  “I came out to catch fish, not to talk.  And you are going to do the same.”

“Oh, confound the fish!” said the luckless one.

Nevertheless, he yielded, seeing that it was expected of him, and took himself off, albeit reluctantly.

Betty watched him go, with a faint smile.  He was a nice boy undoubtedly, but she much preferred him at a distance.

She sat down on the bank above the trout-stream, and took a letter from her pocket.  It had reached her the previous day, and she had already read it many times.  This fact, however, did not deter her from reading it yet again, her chin upon her hand.  It was not a lengthy epistle.

“DEAR BETTY,” it said, “I am back from my wanderings, and I am coming straight to you; but I want you to get this letter first, in time to stop me, if you feel so inclined.  It is useless for me to attempt to soften what I have to say.  I can only put it briefly, just because I know—­too well—­what it will mean to you.