PAN OF THE DESERT Even to a high-flying bird this was a country to be passed over quickly.

It was burned and brown, littered with fragments of rock, whether vast or small, as if the refuse were tossed here after the making of the world.

A passing shower drenched the bald knobs of a range of granite hills and the slant morning sun set the wet rocks aflame with light.

In a short time the hills lost their halo and resumed their brown.

The moisture evaporated.