But for some vague reason which she could not 181 have analyzed had she wished, she went to the paled-in garden where the silver waters trickled and searched among the few flowers growing there for some blossom, sweeter, tenderer, more mild and timid than usual for the pale hands of the Virgin in the deep south room.
With the posy in her fingers she slipped quietly to her sanctuary and knelt before the statue, pensive, frowning, vaguely stirred. She whispered the prayers that Anita had taught her, but she found with a start that the words were meaningless, that she was saying them mechanically.
Her mind had been at the Silver Hollow, seeing again the forest man’s dark eyes, so grave, so quiet, so deep––her right hand was conscious as it had never been in all her life before. She heard a strange man’s condemning voice, felt the warmth of his hands pressed upon hers.
The mistress of Last’s shook herself, both mentally and physically, and set herself to resay her prayers.
When she came out to the life and bustle of the ranch house the cattle were streaming into the far corrals under their dust, the riders were shouting, young Paula sang in the kitchen, and Anita passed back and forth about the evening meal.
There was a slim moon in the west above the 182 Cañon Country. The skies were softly alight, high and vaulted, deep and mysterious and sweet.
World-silence, profound as eternity, hung tangibly above Lost Valley and the Wall, the eastern ramparts of the shelving mountains, the rocklands at the north. There was little sound in all this sleeping wilderness.
Bird life was rare. The waters that fell at seasons from the open mouths of the cañons half way up the Rockface were dried. Down in the Valley itself there could be seen the lights of Corvan which never went out from dusk to dawn. Far to the north a black blot might have been visible with a fuller moon––Courtrey’s herds bedded on the range, the only stock in the Valley so privileged.
Along the foot of the Rockface in the early evening a tiny procession had crawled, three burros, their pack-saddles empty save for a couple of sacks tied across each, and a weazened form that followed them––Old Pete, the snow-packer, bound on his nightly journey to the Cañon Country for the bags of snow for the cooling of the Golden Cloud’s refreshments.