“My God!” breathed Aldous.

“There were just some clothes,” went on MacDonald huskily, “an’ the watch an’ the ring were on top.  Johnny, there weren’t nobody ever buried there, an’ I’m to blame—­I’m to blame.”

“And you did that for us,” cried Aldous, and suddenly he reached over and gripped old Donald’s hands.  “It wasn’t a mistake, Mac.  I thank God you kept silent.  If you had told her that the grave was empty, that it was a fraud, I don’t know what would have happened.  And now—­she is mine! If she had seen Culver Rann, if she had discovered that this scoundrel, this blackmailer and murderer, was Mortimer FitzHugh, her husband——­”

“Johnny!  John Aldous!”

Donald MacDonald’s voice came now like the deep growling roar of a she-bear, and as he cried the other’s name he sprang to his feet, and his eyes gleamed in their deep sockets like raging fires.

“Johnny!”

Aldous rose, and he was smiling.  He nodded.

“That’s it,” he said.  “Mortimer FitzHugh is Culver Rann!”

“An’—­an’ you know this?”

“Absolutely.  Joanne gave me Mortimer FitzHugh’s photograph to destroy.  I am sorry that I burned it before you saw it.  But there is no doubt.  Mortimer FitzHugh and Culver Rann are the same man.”

Slowly the old mountaineer turned to the door.  Aldous was ahead of him, and stood with his hand on the knob.

“I don’t want you to go yet, Mac.”

“I—­I’ll see you a little later,” said Donald clumsily.

“Donald!”

“Johnny!”

For a full half minute they looked steadily into each other’s eyes.

“Only a week, Johnny,” pleaded Donald.  “I’ll be back in a week.”

“You mean that you will kill him?”

“He’ll never come back.  I swear it, Johnny!”

As gently as he might have led Joanne, Aldous drew the mountaineer back to the chair.

“That would be cold-blooded murder,” he said, “and I would be the murderer.  I can’t send you out to do my killing, Mac, as I might send out a hired assassin.  Don’t you see that I can’t?  Good heaven, some day—­very soon—­I will tell you how this hound, Mortimer FitzHugh, poisoned Joanne’s life, and did his worst to destroy her.  It’s to me he’s got to answer, Donald.  And to me he shall answer.  I am going to kill him.  But it will not be murder.  Since you have come into this room I have made my final plan, and I shall follow it to the end coolly and deliberately.  It will be a great game, Mac—­and it will be a fair game; and I shall play it happily, because Joanne will not know, and I will be strengthened by her love.

“Quade wants my life, and tried to hire Stevens, up at Miette, to kill me.  Culver Rann wants my life; a little later it will come to be the greatest desire of his existence to have me dead and out of the way.  I shall give him the chance to do the killing, Mac.  I shall give him a splendid chance, and he will not fail to accept his opportunity.  Perhaps he will have an advantage, but I am as absolutely certain of killing him as I am that the sun is going down behind the mountains out there.  If others should step in, if I should have more than Culver Rann on my hands—­why, then you may deal yourself a hand if you like, Donald.  It may be a bigger game than One against One.”