Aldous went at once to the station, and for the first time inquired into the condition that was holding back the Tete Jaune train.  He found that a slide had given way, burying a section of track under gravel and rock.  A hundred men were at work clearing it away, and it was probable they would finish by noon.  A gang boss, who had come back with telegraphic reports, said that half a dozen men had carried Quade’s hand-car over the obstruction about midnight.

It was seven o’clock when Aldous left for the Miette bottom.  He believed that Joanne would be up.  At this season of the year the first glow of day usually found the Ottos at breakfast, and for half an hour the sun had been shining on the top of Pyramid Mountain.  He was eager to tell her what had passed between him and Keller.  He laughed softly when he confessed to himself how madly he wanted to see her.

He always liked to come up to the Otto home very early of a morning, or in the dusk of evening.  Very frequently he was filled with a desire to stand outside the red-and-white striped walls of the tent-house and listen unseen.  Inside there was always cheer:  at night the crackle of fire and the glow of light, the happy laughter of the gentle-hearted Scotchwoman, and the affectionate banter of her “big mountain man,” who looked more like a brigand than the luckiest and most contented husband in the mountains—­the luckiest, quite surely, with the one exception of his brother Clossen, who had, by some occult strategy or other, induced a sweet-faced and aristocratic little woman to look upon his own honest physiognomy as the handsomest and finest in the world.  This morning Aldous followed a narrow path that brought him behind the tent-house.  He heard no voices.  A few steps more and he emerged upon a scene that stopped him and set his heart thumping.

Less than a dozen paces away stood Mrs. Otto and Joanne, their backs toward him.  They were gazing silently and anxiously in the direction of the thick, low bush across the clearing, through which led the trail to his cabin.  He did not look toward the bush.  His eyes were upon Joanne.  Her slender figure was full in the golden radiance of the morning sun, and Aldous felt himself under the spell of a joyous wonder as he looked at her.  For the first time he saw her hair as he had pictured it—­as he had given it to that other Joanne in the book he had called “Fair Play.”  She had been brushing it in the sun when he came, but now she stood poised in that tense and waiting attitude—­silent—­gazing in the direction of the bush, with that marvellous mantle sweeping about her in a shimmering silken flood.  He would not have moved, nor would he have spoken, until Joanne herself broke the spell.  She turned, and saw him.  With a little cry of surprise she flung back her hair.  He could not fail to see the swift look of relief and gladness that had come into her eyes.  In another instant her face was flushing crimson.