round the ends of the up-rooted trunks led back through the brushwood.  Eleanor stepped to the lowest trunk and began climbing over the pile by ascending first one trunk, then back up another.  Almost on the top, she paused.  It was that same vague rustling movement, too noiseless to be a noise, too evanescent for a sound.  She parted the screen of shrubbery growing from the prone trunks and peered forward.

The same lanes of gold-sifted light leading over the edge of the world through the aisled evergreens, but at the end a glint as of emerald, the sheen of water with the metal glister of green enamel, water marbled like onyx or malachite, with the reflection of a snow cross and dun gray shadows—­shadows of deer standing motionless at the opening of the aisled trees—­come out from the forest at sundown to their drinking place.  Lane of light?  It had been a lane of delight; and that was what all life might be but for the Satyr shadows lurking along the trail.  There were two or three little fawns, just turning from ash coat to ochre gray, nuzzling and wasting the water; and one of the year old deer had turned its head and was sniffing the air looking back, a poetry of motionless motion, all senses poised.  Eleanor held her breath.  If only the other two would come:  yet she had put back her hand to warn them if they should come; and stood so, looking and listening.  She remembered afterwards by the nodding of the blue bells she had known that the wind was away from the deer to her.  There was a quick step on the lowest log.  She stretched back her hand to signal quiet.  The quick noiseless step came up the logs like a stair—­winged feet.  She turned to see what effect this fairy scene would have on the little denizen of the slums.

It wasn’t the frontiersman at all.  It was the Ranger; and she had let the screen of branches spring back with a snap; and the deer had leaped in mid-air, vanishing phantoms; and her hands had met his half way; and his eyes were shining with a light that blinded her presence of mind.  Then, he had drawn her to himself; and afterwards, when she had tried to live it over again, she realized that she had lost count.

Shall we let the curtain drop, dear reader?  For you must remember you are looking upon two sensible young people, who have resolved to keep each other strong to their resolutions.  He had planned exactly how he would conduct himself when this meeting came; guarded, very guarded, so guarded she must know he was keeping a grip for both.  And she had known exactly what she would do when he came:  she would be frank, perfectly frank and open; for had they not both taken the resolution?  And when she came to herself, it was as that night at the Death Watch—­her face thrown back and he was kissing the pulsing veins of her throat, saying in a voice between a breath and a whisper—­“When one has ached in the Desert for seven weeks, one is pretty thirsty.”

“Let me go, dear!  This wild happiness is a kind of madness.”