Joanne laughed happily.

“You are getting better every minute,” she cried joyously.  “But you were terribly beaten by the rocks, John.  If you will wait until you have the broth I will let you sit up.”

A few minutes later, when he had swallowed his broth, Joanne kept her promise.  Only then did he realize that there was not a bone or a muscle in his body that did not have its own particular ache.  He grimaced when Joanne and Donald bolstered him up with blankets at his back.  But he was happy.  Twilight was coming swiftly, and as Joanne gave the final pats and turns to the blankets and pillows, MacDonald was lighting half a dozen candles placed around the room.

“Any watch to-night, Donald?” asked Aldous.

“No, Johnny, there ain’t no watch to-night,” replied the old mountaineer.

He came and seated himself on a bench with Joanne.  For half an hour after that Aldous listened to a recital of the strange things that had happened—­how poor marksmanship had saved MacDonald on the mountain-side, and how at last the duel had ended with the old hunter killing those who had come to slay him.  When they came to speak of DeBar, Joanne leaned nearer to Aldous.

“It is wonderful what love will sometimes do,” she spoke softly.  “In the last few hours Marie has bared her soul to me, John.  What she has been she has not tried to hide from me, nor even from the man she loves.  She was one of Mortimer FitzHugh’s tools.  DeBar saw her and loved her, and she sold herself to him in exchange for the secret of the gold.  When they came into the North the wonderful thing happened.  She loved DeBar—­not in the way of her kind, but as a woman in whom had been born a new heart and a new soul and a new joy.  She defied FitzHugh; she told DeBar how she had tricked him.

“This morning FitzHugh attempted his old familiarity with her, and DeBar struck him down.  The act gave them excuse for what they had planned to do.  Before her eyes Marie thought they had killed the man she loved.  She flung herself on his breast, and she said she could not feel his heart beat, and his blood flowed warm against her hands and face.  Both she and DeBar had determined to warn us if they could.  Only a few minutes before DeBar was stabbed he had let off his rifle—­an accident, he said.  But it was not an accident.  It was the shot Donald heard in the cavern.  It saved us, John!  And Marie, waiting her opportunity, fled to us in the plain.  DeBar was not killed.  He says my screams brought him back to life.  He came out—­and killed Quade with a knife.  Then he fell at our feet.  A few minutes later Donald came.  DeBar is in another cabin.  He is not fatally hurt, and Marie is happy.”

She was stroking his hand when she finished.  The curious rumbling came softly in MacDonald’s beard and his eyes were bright with a whimsical humour.