mirage; he sank below the horizons; he was swallowed up in the
waste of sand and sage. Then, without warning, he would
reappear, coming in from the wilderness, emerging from the
unknown. No one knew him well. In all that countryside he had
but three friends, Presley, Magnus Derrick, and the priest at the
Mission of San Juan de Guadalajara, Father Sarria. He remained
always a mystery, living a life half-real, half-legendary. In
all those years he did not seem to have grown older by a single
day. At this time, Presley knew him to be thirty-six years of
age. But since the first day the two had met, the shepherd's
face and bearing had, to his eyes, remained the same. At this
moment, Presley was looking into the same face he had first seen
many, many years ago. It was a face stamped with an unspeakable
sadness, a deathless grief, the permanent imprint of a tragedy
long past, but yet a living issue. Presley told himself that it
was impossible to look long into Vanamee's eyes without knowing
that here was a man whose whole being had been at one time
shattered and riven to its lowest depths, whose life had suddenly
stopped at a certain moment of its development.

The two friends sat down upon the ledge of the watering-trough,
their eyes wandering incessantly toward the slow moving herd,
grazing on the wheat stubble, moving southward as they grazed.

"Where have you come from this time?" Presley had asked. "Where
have you kept yourself?"

The other swept the horizon to the south and east with a vague
gesture.