MacDonald hurried on ahead of them.  When they reached the camp he was gone, so that Joanne did not see the pick and shovel which he carried back.  She went into the tent and Aldous began building a fire where MacDonald’s had been drowned out.  There was little reason for a fire; but he built it, and for fifteen minutes added pitch-heavy fagots of storm-killed jack-pine and spruce to it, until the flames leapt a dozen feet into the air.  Half a dozen times he was impelled to return to the grave and assist MacDonald in his gruesome task.  But he knew that MacDonald had meant that he should stay with Joanne.  If he returned, she might follow.

He was surprised at the quickness with which MacDonald performed his work.  Not more than half an hour had passed when a low whistle drew his eyes to a clump of dwarf spruce back in the timber.  The mountaineer was standing there, holding something in his hand.  With a backward glance to see that Joanne had not come from the tent, Aldous hastened to him.  What he could see of MacDonald’s face was the lifeless colour of gray ash.  His eyes stared as if he had suffered a strange and unexpected shock.  He went to speak, but no words came through his beard.  In his hand he held his faded red neck-handkerchief.  He gave it to Aldous.

“It wasn’t deep,” he said.  “It was shallow, turribly shallow, Johnny—­just under the stone!”

His voice was husky and unnatural.

There was something heavy in the handkerchief, and a shudder passed through Aldous as he placed it on the palm of his hand and unveiled its contents.  He could not repress an exclamation when he saw what MacDonald had brought.  In his hand, with a single thickness of the wet handkerchief between the objects and his flesh, lay a watch and a ring.  The watch was of gold.  It was tarnished, but he could see there were initials, which he could not make out, engraved on the back of the case.  The ring, too, was of gold.  It was one of the most gruesome ornaments Aldous had ever seen.  It was in the form of a coiled and writhing serpent, wide enough to cover half of one’s middle finger between the joints.  Again the eyes of the two men met, and again Aldous observed that strange, stunned look in the old hunter’s face.  He turned and walked back toward the tent, MacDonald following him slowly, still staring, his long gaunt arms and hands hanging limply at his side.

Joanne heard them, and came out of the tent.  A choking cry fell from her lips when she saw MacDonald.  For a moment one of her hands clutched at the wet canvas of the tent, and then she swayed forward, knowing what John Aldous had in his hand.  He stood voiceless while she looked.  In that tense half-minute when she stared at the objects he held it seemed to him that her heart-strings must snap under the strain.  Then she drew back from them, her eyes filled with horror, her hands raised as if to shut out the sight of them, and a panting, sobbing cry broke from between her pallid lips.