In a hollow concealed by sage, not ten minutes' walk from the Ferry inn, unknown to the map-maker and innocent of all use, lay a perfect floor for evening pacing with one's eyes upon the stars. It was the death mask of an ancient lake, done in purest alkali silt, and needing only the shadows cast by a low moon to make the illusion almost unbelievable. Slow precipitation, season after season, as the water dried, had left the lake bed smooth as a cast in plaster. Subsequent warpings had lifted the alkali crust into thin-lipped wavelets. But once upon the floor itself the resemblance to water vanished. The warpings and Grumblings took the shape of earth as made by water and baked by fire. Moya compared it to a bit of the dead moon fallen to show us what we are coming to. They paced it soft-footed in tennis shoes lest they should crumble its talc-like whiteness. But they read no horoscopes, for they were shy of the future in speaking to each other,--and they made no plans. One evening Moya had said to Paul: “I can understand your mother so much better now that I am a wife. I think most women have a tendency towards the state of being _un_married. And if one had--children, it would increase upon one very fast. A widow and a mother--for twenty years. How could she be a wife again?” Paul made no reply to this speech which long continued to haunt him; especially as Moya wrote more frequently to his mother and did not offer to show him her letters. In their evening walks she seemed distrait, and during the day more restless. One night of their nightly pacings she stopped and stood long, her head thrown back, her eyes fixed upon the dizzy star-deeps. Paul waited a step behind her, touching her shoulders with his hands. Suddenly she reeled and sank backwards into his arms. He held her, watching her lovely face grow whiter; her eyelids closed. She breathed slowly, leaning her whole weight upon him. Coming to herself, she smiled and said it was nothing. She had been that way before. “But--we must go home. We must have a home--somewhere. I want to see your mother. Paul, be good to her--forgive her--for my sake!” XIX PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS Aunt Polly Lewis was disappointed in the latest of her beneficiaries. It was nine years since her husband had locked up his savings in the Mud Springs ranch, a neglected little health-plant at the mouth of the Bruneau. If you were troubled with rheumatism, or a crick in the back, or your “pancrees” didn't act or your blood was “out o' fix, why, you'd better go up to Looanders' for a spell and soak yourself in that blue mud and let aunt Polly diet ye and dost ye with yerb tea.”