The Professor looked grieved. "What's the
matter of you?" he inquired.

"Never you mind!" The knife went back to
the leather again. "Let that horse roll if he wants
to! It ain't any skin off your hands!"

Which was the key-note of all assembled save
the Professor. All except him appeared tense and
nervous and in no way inclined to joke. For a
time after the lean man's rebuke they engaged
in casual talk, then one after another they drew
off their boots and rolled up in their blankets. All
but Stephen. His arm was throbbing with unusual
pain. It was still in splints, and still bandaged
in a sling around his neck, and since it always
hurt him to change positions, he remained
seated beside the fire, wrapped in sober thought.
Outside, in the green-white light of the moon, he
heard the horses one by one sink to rest. Around
him the desert, gripped in death-stillness, pressed
close, while overhead the star-sprinkled dome of
heaven, unclouded, arched in all its wonted glittering
majesty. A long time he sat there, keenly
alive to these things, yet thinking strange thoughts,
thoughts of his loneliness, and what might have
been, and where he might have been, had he never
met the girl. These were new thoughts, and he
presently arose to rid himself of them and turned
in, and soon was in a doze.

Some time later, he did not know how much
later, he was aroused by a sound as of distant
thunder. But as he lifted his head the sound
disappeared. Yet when he dropped his head back

[[236]]

p235 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p236w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p237

v?