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 while trailing moss seemed grasping him with its waxen tendrils.

Overhead, in the intense blue, where soft clouds drifted like mantles that angels had thrown away, a wizard haze quivered and quivered. The great dark shadow of the present was lifted, and light beamed in where light might never be again. He forgot, for the moment, that he held two lives in the hollow of his hand; he forgot that just ahead of him lay the untried road where he would surely stagger, maybe fall.

Arousing himself from the reverie, he reined his horse and drove on. The remainder of the road was even prettier than the first part had been. Riotous bees stole sweets from blooms before unkissed, and the blossoming peach shed warm its rosy flush against pale drifts of apple boughs.

Sundown was stealing through the land as he reached the door where Cherokee met him. Latham's greeting was grateful, apologetic, most painfully self-reproachful.

"I want you to know it was in his interest that I came."