The blood in Aldous’ veins ran faster.  He gripped his pistol harder.  More closely he looked into the moonlit gloom of the trail ahead of him.  He believed that he had guessed the meaning of MacDonald’s warning.  It was the gold!  More than once thought of the yellow treasure far up in the North had thrilled him, but never as it thrilled him now.  Was the old tragedy of it to be lived over again?  Was it again to play its part in a terrible drama of men’s lives, as it had played it more than forty years ago?  The gold!  The gold that for nearly half a century had lain with the bones of its dead, alone with its terrible secret, alone until Donald MacDonald had found it again!  He had not told Joanne the story of it, the appalling and almost unbelievable tragedy of it.  He had meant to do so.  But they had talked of other things.  He had meant to tell her that it was not the gold itself that was luring him far to the north—­that it was not the gold alone that was taking Donald MacDonald back to it.

And now, as he stood for a moment listening to the low sweep of the wind in the spruce-tops, it seemed to him that the night was filled with whispering voices of that long-ago—­and he shivered, and held his breath.  A cloud had drifted under the moon.  For a few moments it was pitch dark.  The fingers of his hand dug into the rough bark of a spruce.  He did not move.  It was then that he heard something above the caressing rustle of the wind in the spruce-tops.

It came to him faintly, from full half a mile deeper in the black forest that reached down to the bank of the Frazer.  It was the night call of an owl—­one of the big gray owls that turned white as the snow in winter.  Mentally he counted the notes in the call.  One, two, three, four—­and a flood of relief swept over him.  It was MacDonald.  They had used that signal in their hunting, when they had wished to locate each other without frightening game.  Always there were three notes in the big gray owl’s quavering cry.  The fourth was human.  He put his hands to his mouth and sent back an answer, emphasizing the fourth note.  The light breeze had died down for a moment, and Aldous heard the old mountaineer’s reply as it floated faintly back to him through the forest.  Continuing to hold his pistol, he went on, this time more swiftly.

MacDonald did not signal again.  The moon was climbing rapidly into the sky, and with each passing minute the night was becoming lighter.  He had gone half a mile when he stopped again and signalled softly.  MacDonald’s voice answered, so near that for an instant the automatic flashed in the moonlight.  Aldous stepped out where the trail had widened into a small open spot.  Half a dozen paces from him, in the bright flood of the moon, stood Donald MacDonald.