The sun had taken his plunge, but he had left behind him his robes of saffron and gold.

We stood long without a word or movement, filling our hearts with the silence and the beauty, till the gold in the west began to grow dim.
High above all the night was stretching her star-pierced, blue canopy, and drawing slowly up from the east over the prairie and over the sleeping hills the soft folds of a purple haze.

The great silence of the dying day had fallen upon the world and held us fast.
"Listen," he said, in a low tone, pointing to the hills.

"Can't you hear them breathe ?" And, looking at their curving shoulders, I fancied I could see them slowly heaving as if in heavy sleep, and I was quite sure I could hear them breathe.

I was under the spell of his voice and his eyes, and nature was all living to me then.
We rode back to the Stopping Place in silence, except for a word of mine now and then which he heeded not; and, with hardly a good night, he left me at the door.