“No, you will not be responsible,” replied Aldous, steadying the tremble in his voice.  “Besides, nothing is going to happen.  But you don’t know how happy you have made me by taking this sort of an interest in me.  It—­it feels good,” he laughed.

For a few paces he dropped behind her, where the overhead spruce boughs left but the space for a single rider between.  Then, again, he drew up close beside her.

“I was going to tell you about this gold,” he said.  “It isn’t the gold we’re going after.”

He leaned over until his hand rested on her saddle-bow.

“Look ahead,” he went on, a curious softness in his voice.  “Look at MacDonald!”

The first shattered rays of the sun were breaking over the mountains and reflecting their glow in the valley.  Donald MacDonald had lifted his face to the sunrise; out from under his battered hat the morning breeze sweeping through the valley of the Frazer tossed his shaggy hair; his great owl-gray beard swept his breast; his broad, gaunt shoulders were hunched a little forward as he looked into the east.  Again Aldous looked into Joanne’s eyes.

“It’s not the gold, but MacDonald, that’s taking me north, Ladygray.  And it’s not the gold that is taking MacDonald.  It is strange, almost unbelievedly strange—­what I am going to tell you.  To-day we are seeking a grave—­for you.  And up there, two hundred miles in the north, another grave is calling MacDonald.  I am going with him.  It just happens that the gold is there.  You wouldn’t guess that for more than forty years that blessed old wanderer ahead of us has loved a dead woman, would you?  You wouldn’t think that for nearly half a century, year in and year out, winter and summer alike, he has tramped the northern mountains—­a lost spirit with but one desire in life—­to find at last her resting-place?  And yet it is so, Ladygray.  I guess I am the only living creature to whom he has opened his heart in many a long year.  A hundred times beside our campfire I have listened to him, until at last his story seems almost to be a part of my own.  He may be a little mad, but it is a beautiful madness.”

He paused.

“Yes,” whispered Joanne.  “Go on—­John Aldous.”

“It’s—­hard to tell,” he continued.  “I can’t put the feeling of it in words, the spirit of it, the wonder of it.  I’ve tried to write it, and I couldn’t.  Her name was Jane.  He has never spoken of her by any other name than that, and I’ve never asked for the rest of it.  They were kids when their two families started West over the big prairies in Conestoga wagons.  They grew up sweethearts.  Both of her parents, and his mother, died before they were married.  Then, a little later, his father died, and they were alone.  I can imagine what their love must have been.  I have seen it still living in his eyes, and I have seen it in his strange hour-long dreams after he has talked of her.  They were always together.  He has told me how