The scene within was terrible. Upon the stone floor lay a brown-skinned skeleton with bulging eyes and clawing fingers muttering incoherently.

Sorez could do nothing but administer a small injection of the soothing drug, but this brought instant relief and with it a few moments of sanity. The doctor had picked up a small vocabulary and gathered from what the dying man muttered that he, Sorez, a very much bruised and weary mortal, was being mistaken for one from heaven. A smile lighted the haggard face of the invalid and the bony hands came together in prayer. The girl bent over him and then drew back in horror. She met the eyes of her father in some new-found wonder, gasping for breath. Then she bent her ear once more. The message, whatever it was, was repeated. Still, as though half doubting, she moved to the rear of the hut and pounded with a large rock against what was apparently the naked face of the cliff in which the hut was built. It swung in, revealing a sort of shrine. Within this reposed a golden image. She turned her eyes again upon her father and then without hesitation took out the idol and handed it to Sorez.

"The G.o.d of G.o.ds," she whispered, bending low her head.

"But I don't want your G.o.d," protested the doctor.

"You must. He says it is for you to guard."

He had taken it carelessly to humor the dying man. And when the latter closed his eyes for all time, Sorez remembered that the heathen image was still in his possession. He started to return it to the shrine, but the girl threw herself before him.

"No. The trust is yours."

Well, it would be a pleasant memento of an incident that was anything but pleasant. He brought it down the mountain side and put it beneath his blanket.

It was not until several days later that bit by bit he came to a realization of that which he had so lightly taken. The old man who brought his food whispered the news through ashen lips.

"The Golden One is gone."

"Who is the Golden One?"

"The Golden G.o.d in the hut above who guards the secret of the sacred treasure. It is said that some day this image will speak and tell where the lost altar lies."

The whole tribe was in the grip of an awful terror over this disappearance. But the Priest proved master of the situation.

"It will be found," he said.

In the excitement Sorez found his opportunity to escape, with the help of the girl, the image still beneath his coat,--the image fated to light in him the same fires which drove on Raleigh and Quesada. Before he reached the home trail he had a chance to see this strange Priest of whom he had heard so much in connection with the rumored treasure in the lake. He came upon him, a tall, sallow-faced man, when within an hour of safety. Sorez had never before met eyes such as looked from beneath the skull-like forehead of this man; they bored, bored like hot iron. The Priest spoke good English.

"Leave the image," he said quietly.

Sorez, his hand upon a thirty-two caliber revolver, laughed (even as Quesada had laughed) and disappeared in the dark. The next time he met the Priest was many months later and many thousand miles from the Andes.

The girl who, at the command of her father, had given Sorez the image was made an exile in consequence of this act by a decree of the priest. But the thread of love is universal. It is the strain out of which springs all idealism--even the notion of G.o.d--and as such is bounded by neither time nor place. It is in the beating hearts of all things human--the definition perhaps of humanity. Civilization differs from savagery in many things, but both have in common, after all, whatever is eternal; and love is the thing alone which we know to be eternal. Just human love--love of man for woman and woman for man.

Flores followed her into the mountains among which they had both grown. He built a shelter for her, bought sheep and toiled for her, and with her, found the best of all that a larger life brings to many.

The Priest, of course, could have easily annihilated the two, but he hesitated. There was something in the hearts of his people with which he dare not tamper. So the two had been able to live their idyl in peace, though Flores slept always with one eye open and his knife near.

It was quite by accident that Sorez and the tired girl came upon the two at the finish of his second journey into these mountains. The woman in the hut recognized him instantly and bade him welcome. The one-room structure was given up to the women while Flores built near it a leanto for himself and Sorez. This simplified things mightily for the exhausted travelers, and gave them at once the opportunity for much-needed rest. They slept the major part of two days, but Sorez again showed his remarkable recuperative powers by awaking with all his old-time strength of body and mind. He accepted the challenge of the lake and mountains with all his former fearlessness. He thought no more of the danger which lurked near him than he did of the possible failure of his expedition. It was this magnificent domination of self, this utter scorn of circ.u.mstance, which made such a situation as this in which he now found himself with the girl possible. No ordinary man would, with so weak a frame, have dared face such a venture.

To the girl he had been as thoughtful and as kind as a father. He lavished upon her a care and affection that seemed to find relief for whatever uneasiness of conscience he felt. Though Sorez realized that the Priest must know of his presence here and would spare no effort to get the image, he felt safe enough in this hut. With a few simple defenses Flores had made secret approach to the hut practically impossible. The cliff walls protected them from the rear, while approach from the front could be made only by the lake, save for short distances on either side. Across these s.p.a.ces Flores had sprinkled dry twigs and so sensitive had his hearing become by his constant watchfulness that he would awake instantly upon the snapping of one of these. As a further precaution he placed his sheep at night within this enclosure, knowing that no one could approach without exciting them to a panic.

Moreover, Sorez suspected that the Priest had kept secret from the tribe his failure to recover the image after his long absence in pursuit of it. Not only was such a loss a reflection on his power, but it challenged the power of the Golden Man himself. Would the Sun G.o.d allow such a thing? Could the image be gone with no divine manifestations of its loss? Such questions were sure to be asked.

The Priest had no men he could trust with a secret so important. He would work alone. The matter would end with a rifle bullet or a stab in the dark--if it ended in favor of the Priest. With the vanishing of the treasure and the return of the image--if in favor of Sorez.

During the three days they had spent at the lake Jo had grown very serious and thoughtful. This seemed such a fairy world in which they were living that things took on new values. The two were seated around the fire with Flores and his wife in the shadows, when the girl spoke of new fears which had possessed her lately. Led on as much by what she herself saw and continued to see in the crystals, by the fascination she found in venturing into these new and strange countries, but above all by the domination of this stronger and older personality, she had until now followed without much sober thinking.

If she hesitated, if she paused, he had only to tell of some rumor of a strange seaman in the city of Bogova or repeat one of the dozen wild tales current of Americans who had gone into the interior in search of gold and there been lost for years to turn up later sound and rich. He had hurried her half asleep from the house at Bogova and frightened her into silent obedience by suggesting that Wilson might by force take her back home when upon the eve of finding her father. She had looked again into the crystal and as always had seen him wandering among big hills in a region much like this. What did it all mean? She did not know, but now a deeper, more insistent longing was lessening the hold of the other. Her thoughts in the last few days had gone back more often than ever they had to the younger man who had played, with such vivid, brilliant strokes, so important a part in her life. She felt, what was new to her, a growing need of him--a need based on nothing tangible and yet none the less eager. She turned to Sorez.

"I am almost getting discouraged," she said. "When shall we turn back?"

"Soon. Soon. Have you lost interest in the treasure altogether?"

"The treasure never mattered very much to me, did it? You have done your best to help me find my father, and for that I am willing to help you with this other thing. But I am beginning to think that neither of the quests is real."

She added impulsively:

"Twice I have left the most real thing in my life--once at home and once in Bogova. I shall not do it again."

"You refer to Wilson?"

"Yes. Here in the mountains--here with Flores and his wife, I am beginning to see."

"What, my girl?"

"That things of to-day are better worth than things of to-morrow."

Sorez shifted a bit uneasily. He had come to care a great deal for the girl--to find her occupying the place in his heart left empty by the death of the niece who lived in Boston. He was able less and less to consider her impersonally even in the furtherance of this project. He would have given one half the fortune he expected, really to be able to help the girl to her father. He had lied--lied, taking advantage of this pa.s.sionate devotion to entice her to the sh.o.r.es of this lake with her extraordinary gift of crystal-seeing. He was beginning to wonder if it were worth while. At any rate, he would be foolish not to reap the reward of his deceit at this point.

"Well," he concluded brusquely, "we must not get gloomy on the eve of victory. To-morrow the moon is full--do you think you will be strong enough to come with me to-morrow night to the shrine of the Golden Man?"

"Yes," she answered indifferently.

"He chose his own and surely he will not desert the agent of his choosing."

"No," answered the girl.

Her eyes rested a moment upon the silver lake before her and then upon the cliffs beyond. She had an odd desire this evening to get nearer to those walls of granite. A dozen times she had found her eyes turning to them and each time she obeyed the impulse it was followed by a new longing for David. She wished he were here with her now. She wished he was to be with her to-morrow night when Sorez took her out upon the lake with him. She did not mind gazing into the eyes of the image, of sinking under their spell, but now--this time--she would feel better if he were near her. She had a feeling as though he _were_ somewhere near her--as though he were up there near the cliffs which she faced.

CHAPTER XXV

_What the Stars Saw_

The moon shone broadly over a pool of purplish quicksilver. A ragged fringe of trees bordered it like a wreath. The waters were quiet--very, very quiet. They scarcely rippled the myriad stars which glittered back mockingly at those above. The air over and above it all was the thin air of the skies, not of the earth. It was as silent here as in the purple about the planets. Man seemed too coa.r.s.e for so fine a setting. Even woman, nearest of all creatures to fairy stuff, must needs be at her best to make a fitting part of this.

From out of the shadows of this fringe of trees there stole silently another shadow. This moved slowly like a funeral barge away from the sh.o.r.e. As it came full into the radius of that silver light (a light matching the dead) it seemed more than ever one with sheeted things, for half p.r.o.ne upon this raft lay a girl whose cheeks were white against the background of her black hair and whose eyes saw nothing of the world about her. She stared more as the dead stare than the living,--stared into the shining eyes of the golden image which she held with rigid arms upon her knees, the image which had entangled so many lives. Her bosom moved rhythmically, slowly, showing that she was not dead. The golden image stared back at her. Its eyes caught the moonbeams in its brilliant surfaces, so that it looked more a living thing than she who held it.

Facing them, standing bolt upright save when he stooped a trifle to reach forward with his paddle, was Sorez, who might have pa.s.sed for Charon. His thin frame, his hollow cheeks, the intense look of his burning eyes gave him a ghostly air. The raft moved without a sound, scarcely rippling the waters before it, scarcely disturbing in its wake the gaunt shadow cast by Sorez, which followed them like a pursuing spectre. He studied keenly the dumb sh.o.r.es which lay in a broad circ.u.mference about them. He could see every yard of the lake and saw that they themselves were the only scar upon its mirror surface.

Peak upon peak looked down upon them, and higher, star upon star.

Dead, indifferent things they were, chance accessories to this drama.

They awaited the touch of sterner forces than those of man for their changes.

He who drove the raft along breathed as one who is trying hard to control himself in the face of a great emotion. His eyes continually shifted from the girl to the sh.o.r.es, then back again to the girl. In this way he reached a position near the middle of the lake. Here he paused.

He seemed to hesitate at the next step as though a great deal depended upon it. His lips moved, but he seemed afraid to break the silence.