"Meant?" repeated Keith, questioningly. "Yes. To the tribe, it means more than a mere ring. The old Mexican gathered that much. It had something the significance of a sceptre, and was worn only by one of the rulers in the old days. When that girl put it on your finger, the tribe thought it meant that she had picked you out for marriage. She didn't tell you?" "No, she didn't tell me." "Well, it's all that saved our lives that night. You know the old padre is dead. It was he did the sleight-of-hand work in getting the girl out of sight before you got on your feet again. With some threat of eternal flames, he shut the lips of every Mexican I tried to bribe to find her." Keith took the cigarette from his lips, and looked at him without speaking. Teddy smiled and nodded. "Yes, I looked for her without your knowing it. You came nearer going 'over the range' in that fever than you ever realized. The English doctor down there asked me who the devil 'Espiritu' was, and said that she could probably do more to lower your temperature than his drugs. I tried to locate her, as soon as I could hobble on a crutch, but it was no use. The padre said she had taken the black veil: that shut us out." "Yes, of course," assented Keith, absently. "You never mentioned her name after you got on your feet, so I figured that it did not really mean anything. Girls never did mean much to you, individually, Keith,--until now." "Until now." "And now it's no use, since you can't see her again." Keith puffed away in thoughtful silence before he spoke. "Perhaps not. Yet--_quien sabe_? A sentiment may be like a sunrise, lifting clouds for you and making you see things--things within yourself you never suspected were there. Our trail in these hills followed the light of the morning star once, and we got out of the wilderness to safety: that star has meant something to me ever since. I can't possess it, but the meaning of it is mine. I can't give myself to the right woman,"--and he held out his hand and looked at it,--"but no conventions of the world, no man-made walls can prevent the thought of me from going to her--the thought which, after all, is the real me. When that is so, who can say that even an unknown love has not its own uses? It may prove the illumination of a whole lifetime." Teddy, with wonder in his eyes, laid his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Old man, that kind of feeling is beyond me. I want my girl with me, and I want her mighty bad. I've lived beside you all my life, and never dreamed it was in you to care like that for any woman. It only shows how little we know, after all." "Yes; how little, after all, until the right woman crosses the trail." "The chances are that we can never talk of it again. I know you _that_ much! I told you this old hill of the temple was uncanny--bewitched,--and it is. You never would have mentioned this to me in civilized places." "Perhaps not," agreed Keith. "And you're right--I could never speak of it again."