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86 she should bear testimony to them and to their work; but to desert him and leave him to the lost of the carrion-birds and the torrid heat of the noon never passed in thought even before her—whatever fate should come of it, she had cast in her lot with his.

The sun fell through the tracery of firs upon the rushing water, the mosses red with blood, the black flock of the waiting birds, and the motionless form of Erceldoune, stretched across his slaughtered horse, his head resting, as if in the serenity of sleep, upon the bosom of the woman who had saved him, while above bent the magnificence of her face, with a golden light on its mournful splendour, and the softness of compassion in the lustre of the eyes that watched him in his unconsciousness.

Time wore on, the sun rose to noon height, the heat grew more intense, and they were still alone; he lay as in a trance still, but with that vague sense of coolness and of peace, all that he knew or sought to know; once his eyes unclosed, weary and blind, and saw, as in a vision, the face as of an angel above him. He had not strength to rouse, power to wonder, consciousness to know or ask whether he slept, or dreamed, or beheld but the phantom of his own brain; but his eyes gazed upward at the