In all that countryside he had but three friends, Presley, Magnus Derrick, and the priest at the Mission of San Juan de Guadalajara, Father Sarria.
He remained always a mystery, living a life half-real, half-legendary.
In all those years he did not seem to have grown older by a single day.
At this time, Presley knew him to be thirty-six years of age.

But since the first day the two had met, the shepherd's face and bearing had, to his eyes, remained the same.

At this moment, Presley was looking into the same face he had first seen many, many years ago.

It was a face stamped with an unspeakable sadness, a deathless grief, the permanent imprint of a tragedy long past, but yet a living issue.

Presley told himself that it was impossible to look long into Vanamee's eyes without knowing that here was a man whose whole being had been at one time shattered and riven to its lowest depths, whose life had suddenly stopped at a certain moment of its development.
The two friends sat down upon the ledge of the watering-trough, their eyes wandering incessantly toward the slow moving herd, grazing on the wheat stubble, moving southward as they grazed.
"Where have you come from this time ?" Presley had asked.