Meantime the pinto and his rider had tracked the others up to the Pine Croft bungalow, along the upper trail, and down again toward the big rapid. To Paul, who for the past two years had been trained in sign reading by Indian Tom, his father’s ancient factotum, the trail lay plain as the open road. After the first wild gallop he was in no hurry to catch up. The glory of the early June day filled his world, right up to the blue sky. With his eyes open to the unending variety of colour and form in the growing things about him, he cantered slowly along, his lithe form swaying in unison with every motion of his pony. He had the make of a rider and his style was a curious mixture of his father’s and Indian Tom’s. His hands were his father’s; the easy yielding sway of his body he had from Indian Tom. But, whatever its source, every movement of every part of his body was smooth, easy, graceful. As the pinto carried him along in swallow-like movement, his mind following his eye went first to the pictures that kept composing and dissolving themselves on either side, and from them to those pictures which from his earliest years he had watched his father call into being in his studio. Where was his father now? For three years there had been silence, from that dreadful day when his father, gaunt, broken, his great frame heaving with deep-drawn sobs, had ridden down the Golden trail, followed by Indian Tom, leaving him with Colonel Pelham. Two words only had his father spoken, two unforgettable words. “Paul, your mother has gone to God. Let every morning bring back to you her words.” And the other, “Some day I will come back to you—point of honour,” using a phrase common to those three when the word was pledged. Those two words he carried in his heart. With every opening dawn his first thoughts went to his mother. He was dismayed to find how few were his mother’s words that came to him as he sat down deliberately to recall them. To his delight he stumbled upon a plan. When struggling with his Catechism—it was a point of honour that he should complete the task his mother had not seen completed—he found upon reviewing the questions he had discussed with her that floods of memories were let loose upon his mind. With painful care, for, though he had his father’s fingers and was clever with them, he had made no very great progress with his penmanship, he undertook to set down, in one of his father’s sketch books, all her sayings that came back to him. The words associated with the Bible stories were much easier to recall. The chirography and orthography would have quite paralysed the intelligence of learned experts, but to himself the record was perfectly intelligible, and with its increasing volume became an increasingly precious possession. This record he kept hidden from mortal eyes, but somehow he had the conviction both God and his mother knew all about it. The two were very really and vitally associated in his thought.