After a time Anne paused again to look gravely at strange lights. But this time they seemed not to be red or green, but to be of orange, in long, fiery flashes, like ribbons thrown suddenly out and as suddenly withdrawn. The noise stopped, and was succeeded by a buzzing. For a moment the girl's blurred vision saw clearly the room, all still, except for a man huddled in one corner, and on the floor a slowly gathering pool of red. Someone thrust her out of the door with others, and she began to step aimlessly, uncertainly, along the broad street. She felt dimly the difference between the hot air of the dance-hall and the warm air out of doors. The great hills and the stars and the silhouetted houses came and went in visions, just as had the people and the noise inside the hall. The idea of walking came to her, and occupied her mind to the exclusion of everything else, and she set about it with great intentness. How far she went and in what direction did not seem to matter. When she moved she was happy; when she stopped she was miserable. So she wandered on in the way she knew, and yet did not know, out of the broad streets of the town, through a wide cleft in the hills, up a long grassy valley that wound slowly and mounted gradually, following the brawl of the stream, until at last she found herself in a little fern-grown dell at the entrance of Iron Creek Pass. She pushed her fingers through her fallen hair, and idly over the shimmering stuff of her gown. Far above her she saw waveringly the stars. Finally the idea of sleep came to her, just as the idea of walking had come to her before. She sank to her knees, hesitated a moment, and then, with the sigh of a tired child, she pillowed her head on her soft round arm and closed her eyes. * * * * * The poor-wills ceased their plaintive cries. A few smaller birds chirped drowsily. Back of the eastern hills the stars became a little dimmer, and the soft night breeze, which had been steadily blowing through the darkened hours, sank quietly to sleep. The subtle magic of nature began to sketch in the picture of day, throwing objects forward from the dull background, taking them bodily out of the blackness, as though creating them anew. Fresh life stirred through everything. The vault of heaven seemed full of it, and all the ravines and by-ways caught up its overflow in a grand chorus of praise to the new-whitening morning.