His lean, swarthy face, with its hollow cheeks, fine, black, pointed beard, and sad eyes, was set to the northward.

As was his custom, he was bareheaded, and the rapidity of his stride made a breeze in his long, black hair.

He knew where he was going.

He knew what he must live through that night.
Again, the deathless grief that never slept leaped out of the shadows, and fastened upon his shoulders.

It was scourging him back to that scene of a vanished happiness, a dead romance, a perished idyl,--the Mission garden in the shade of the venerable pear trees.
But, besides this, other influences tugged at his heart.