The grass of the foreground lay patterned with the graceful shadows of acacia boughs. Between them he saw the low gray house, about which the luxuriance of flowers made the only confusion. Hens were pecking and dogs basking in the neat kitchen yard; and Miss Smith, in default of a servant, was quietly sweeping the kitchen porch. The place was like a dream of home. "Surely," he said to himself, "if the angel of peace could ever seek an earthly dwelling, she might well alight here and fold her wings." He led the horse down the trail with brows knit, and in his mind the intention of further remonstrance with Bertha; but she mounted and rode away without a moment's delay. Book II Chapter XVI A CALL FOR HELP That night Adam, who had given up his cabin to the female watchers of the dead, lay stretched at the door of Durgan's hut. In the small hours Durgan was awakened by the negro's sighs. "Oh, Adam! Can't you sleep?" "Oh! Marse Neil, suh; d'you think my pore gal's in de bad place? The min'ster, he come to see me to-day, an' he said as how she was, 'cause she wasn't converted. D'you think so, suh?" If Durgan had the modern distrust of old-fashioned preaching, he did not feel sure that he knew better than the preacher. He lay a moment, thinking of the brightness and lightness of the creature so suddenly laid stark, trying in thought to place her spirit in any sort of angelic state. It would not do; the woman, as he knew her, refused to be content with any heaven his thought could offer. He could not conceive of any sane and wholesome spiritual condition to which the trivial, sensual soul could be adjusted. "Oh, Adam, I don't know any better than your preacher; but I can tell you something that I suppose----" "Yes, Marse Neil?" The tone told of a deep, sustained attention which surprised the educated man. "I think the good Lord will take you to the good place when you die, and that----" "Yes, but marsa, I done gone an' got religion long time ago, an' my pore gal she wer'n't ever converted." "I was going to say that I think the Lord may let you be as near her there as you were here if you go on caring for her--which was all the distance between heaven and hell," he added within himself. Before the dawn Durgan was again disturbed. Far off there was hint of a sound, the hoofs of several horses, perhaps--a ring, faint and far, of a bridle chain? Yes, certainly, horsemen were in the valley. Adam heard nothing but the throbs of his own heart-sorrow. Durgan listened. The road in the valley circled the mountain to Deer Cove. The sound of the horsemen was lost again almost before it was clearly heard. They were coming from Hilyard; were they coming further than the village? An hour later he heard them again; they were on the road to the mine.