Presently, as they went along, he glanced up at her with a smile. "Do you know," he said, "you look just as you did the first time I saw you, as you rode up to the gate at Locust, all in white, and on a black horse. Maybe having your hair hanging loose as you did then makes me think so. I never imagined then that I'd ever see you again, much less find you away out here on the desert."
"It is queah," answered Lloyd. "I thought I must be dreaming when I heard you sing 'From the desert I come to thee.'"
"And I certainly thought I was dreaming," answered Phil, "when, in answer to my call, you appeared all in white. You could have knocked me down with a feather, for an instant. I was startled. Then I thanked my lucky stars that led me your way."
He began again humming the Bedouin song. Lloyd, looking out across the wide, moonlighted desert and up at the twinkling stars, wondered if it was fate that had brought him to her rescue; if it could be possible that through him was to come the happiness written for her in the stars.
"There's the Wigwam light," said Phil, presently, pausing in his song to point it out to her. "We're almost there. I'll never forget this adventure--till--" He took up the refrain again, smiling into her eyes as he hummed it. The refrain that was to ring through Lloyd's memory for many a year to come, whenever she thought of this ride across the moonlighted desert:
"_Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!_"
THERE was another mark on the kitchen calendar now; not a red star, betokening some happy event to come, but a deep black border, drawn all around the date on which Lloyd's visit was to end. The heavy black lines marked the time as only a few days distant.
It was Saturday again, a week after the excursion to the Indian school. Joyce had gone down to the ranch, for Mr. Armond to criticize the drawings which she had made since the last lesson, and Lloyd, on the seat under the willows, was waiting for Phil. He was to come at four, and ride over to one of the neighbouring orange groves with her.
She had a book in her hand, but she was not reading. She was listening to the water gurgle through the little water-gate into the lateral, and thinking of all that had happened during her visit, especially since the night she was lost on the desert, and Phil had found her.