* * * * * Once again Tharon met Kenset in the days that followed. Riding by the Silver Hollow she stopped one breathless afternoon, drank of the snow-cold waters, shared them with El Rey, dropped the rein over the stallion's head and flung herself full length on the earth beside the spring. A clump of willow trees grew here, for every spring in Lost Valley had its lone sentinels to call its presence across the stretching miles. As the girl lay flat on her back with her hands beneath her head, she looked up into the blue heart of the arching skies where the fleecy white clouds sailed, and a sense of sweetness and peace came down upon her like a garment. "You're sure some lovely spot, Lost Valley," she said aloud, "an' no mistake. I know, more'n ever as th' days go by that Jim Last was only jokin' when he told me of those other places out below, big as you, lovely as you. It just ain't possible. Is it, El Rey, old boy?" And she moved a booted foot to the king's striped hoof and tapped it smartly. El Rey, always aloof, always touchy, never sure of temper, jumped and snorted. The girl laughed and crossed her feet and fell to speculating idly about the world that lay beyond Lost Valley. Little she knew of it. Only the brief words of her father from time to time, the reluctant speech of Last's riders, for the master of the Holding had laid down the law concerning this. His daughter was of the Valley, content. He meant her to be so always. The man who had instilled into her young mind a discontent with her environment, a longing for the "flesh-pots" of the world as he had styled it once, would have had short shrift at Last's. He would have received his time and "gone packing" swiftly. And Tharon was content. Barring the loneliness that had come with Jim Last's death, she was well content. So she lay by the willows and hummed a sliding tune, a soft, sweet thing of minors and high notes falling, like rippling waters, and lazily watched the high white clouds sail by. And as she lay she became conscious of something else in the drowsing land beside herself and her horse. She felt it first, this presence--a thin, dim vibration that sang in the earth beneath her. It stopped the wordless song on her lips, stilled the breath in her throat, set every nerve in her to listening, as it were. Presently she sat up and felt quickly for the gun-butts in their scabbards. Then she parted the willows and looked out over the rolling slopes and levels. True enough. A horseman was coming in from the west, making for the Silver Hollow, but Tharon smiled and her fingers relaxed on the gun. This man rode straight--like a lance, she thought--and his mount was brown, a good-enough common horse, but no steed of Lost Valley.