CHAPTER X
The First Visitation
“CLIONA, my dear, ‘tis a quaint-looking present I’ve brought you, but they do say it’s worth a power of money for its rarity. The value I put on it, though, is another sort. There’s a tale behind it so wild I’d not tell it to even you, little sister, lest you think me a liar of outrageous imaginations.”
Colin O’Hara passed his fingers reflectively over the polished bit of colored porcelain in his hand. Fifteen years had elapsed since first he set eyes on it, when his trail-mate had lifted it down from the bracket in Biornson’s hacienda.
Those years had left no mark on the porcelain godling but they had wrought their inevitable changes in the man. The face that at twenty was broadly good-humored was good-humored still. But the blurred lines of youth had
