Page:Death Comes for the Archbishop.pdf/244

 and lifted his hand, not in benediction but in salutation, and called out to the departing missionary, as one man to another, “Coraggio, Americano!”

Bishop Latour found his Navajo house favourable for reflection, for recalling the past and planning the future. He wrote long letters to his brother and to old friends in France. The hogan was isolated like a ship’s cabin on the ocean, with the murmuring of great winds about it. There was no opening except the door, always open, and the air without had the turbid yellow light of sand-storms. All day long the sand came in through the cracks in the walls and formed little ridges on the earth floor. It rattled like sleet upon the dead leaves of the tree-branch roof. This house was so frail a shelter that one seemed to be sitting in the heart of a world made of dusty earth and moving air.

the third day of his visit with Eusabio, the Bishop wrote a somewhat formal letter of recall to his Vicar, and then went for his daily walk in the