"That's all imagination," he said. "When some one we love dies we're always thinking things like that - that we neglected them, or slighted them, or told them what wasn't true. They stand out in our memories bigger than all the good things we did. Don't you worry about any lies you ever told your father. You've got nothing to accuse yourself of where he's concerned - or anybody else, either."

Her heart, that had throbbed wildly as she thought to begin her confession, sunk back to a forlorn beat. He noticed her dejected air, and said comfortingly:

"Don't be downhearted, Missy. It's been terribly hard for you, but you'll feel better when we get to California, and can live like Christians again."

"California!" Her intonation told of the changed mind with which she now looked forward to the Promised Land.

His consolatory intentions died before his own sense of grievance at the toil yet before them.

"Good Lord, it does seem far - farther than it did in the beginning. I used to be thinking of it all the time then, and how I'd get to work the first moment we arrived. And now I don't care what it's like or think of what I'm going to do. All I want to get there for is to stop this eternal traveling and rest."

She, too, craved rest, but of the spirit. Her outlook was blacker than his, for it offered none and drew together to a point where her tribulations focused in a final act of self-immolation. There was a pause, and he said, drowsiness now plain in his voice:

"But we'll be there some day unless we die on the road, and then we can take it easy. The first thing I'm going to do is to get a mattress to sleep on. No more blankets on the ground for me. Do you ever think what it'll be like to sleep in a room again under a roof, a good, waterproof roof, that the sun and the rain can't come through? The way I feel now that's my idea of Paradise."

She murmured a low response, her thoughts far from the flesh pots of his wearied longing.

"I think just at this moment," he went on dreamily, "I'd rather have a good sleep and a good meal than anything else in the world. I often dream of 'em, and then Daddy John's kicking me and it's morning and I got to crawl out of the blanket and light the fire. I don't know whether I feel worse at that time or in the evening when we're making the last lap for the camping ground." His voice dropped as if exhausted before the memory of these unendurable moments, then came again with a note of cheer: "Thank God, Courant's with us or I don't believe we'd ever get there."

She had no reply to make to this. Neither spoke for a space, and then she cautiously stole a glance at him and was relieved to see that he was asleep. Careful to be noiseless she rose, took up a tin water pail and walked to the river.

The Humboldt rushed through a deep-cut bed, nosing its way between strewings of rock. Up the banks alders and willows grew thick, thrusting roots, hungry for the lean deposits of soil, into cracks and over stony ledges. By the edge the current crisped about a flat rock, and Susan, kneeling on this, dipped in her pail. The water slipped in in a silvery gush which, suddenly seething and bubbling, churned in the hollowed tin, nearly wrenching it from her. She leaned forward, dragging it awkwardly toward her, clutching at an alder stem with her free hand. Her head was bent, but she raised it with a jerk when she heard Courant's voice call, "Wait, I'll do it for you."