They shook hands.

“I’m ready to blow up with curiosity again,” said Blackton.  “But I’ll play your game, Aldous.”

A few minutes later Joanne and Peggy Blackton joined them.  He saw again the quick flush of pleasure in Joanne’s lovely face when she entered the room.  It changed instantly when she saw the livid cuts in his skin.  She came to him quickly, and gave him her hand.  Her lips trembled, but she did not speak.  Blackton accepted this as the psychological moment.

“What do you think of a man who’ll wander off a trail, tumble over a ledge, and get mixed up in a bunch of wait-a-bit like that?” he demanded, laughing as though he thought it a mighty good joke on Aldous.  “Wait-a-bit thorns are worse than razors, Miss Gray,” he elucidated further.  “They’re—­they’re perfectly devilish, you know!”

“Indeed they are,” emphasized Peggy Blackton, whom her husband had given a quick look and a quicker nudge, “They’re dreadful!”

Looking straight into Joanne’s eyes, Aldous guessed that she did not believe, and scarcely heard, the Blacktons.

“I had a presentiment something was going to happen,” she said, smiling at him.  “I’m glad it was no worse than that.”

She withdrew her hand, and turned to Peggy Blackton.  To John’s delight she had arranged her wonderful shining hair in a braid that rippled in a thick, sinuous rope of brown and gold below her hips.  Peggy Blackton had in some way found a riding outfit for her slender figure, a typical mountain outfit, with short divided skirt, loose blouse, and leggings.  She had never looked more beautiful to him.  Her night’s rest had restored the colour to her soft cheeks and curved lips; and in her eyes, when she looked at him again, there was a strange, glowing light that thrilled him.  During the next half-hour he almost forgot his telltale disfigurements.  At breakfast Paul and Peggy Blackton were beautifully oblivious of them.  Once or twice he saw in Joanne’s clear eyes a look which made him suspect that she had guessed very near to the truth.

MacDonald was prompt to the minute.  Gray day, with its bars of golden tint, was just creeping over the shoulders of the eastern mountains when he rode up to the Blacktons’.  The old hunter was standing close to the horse which Joanne was to ride when Aldous brought her out.  Joanne gave him her hand, and for a moment MacDonald bowed his shaggy head over it.  Five minutes later they were trailing up the rough wagon-road, MacDonald in the lead, and Joanne and Aldous behind, with the single pack horse between.

For several miles this wagon-trail reached back through the thick timber that filled the bottom between the two ranges of mountains.  They had travelled but a short distance when Joanne drew her horse close in beside Aldous.

“I want to know what happened last night,” she said.  “Will you tell me?”