There was frost in the valley when one clear morning Alton lay partly dressed in a big chair beside the stove at Somasco ranch.  Outside the snow lay white on the clearing, and the great pines rose above it sombre and motionless under the sunlight that had no warmth in it, while the peaks beyond them shone with a silvery lustre against the cloudless blue.  It was a day to set the blood stirring and rouse the vigour of the strong, and Alton felt the effect of it as he lay listening to the rhythmic humming of the saws.  The sound spoke of activity, and raising himself a trifle in his chair he glanced at his partner with a faint sparkle in his eye.

“It’s good to feel alive again,” he said.

Seaforth’s smile was somewhat forced, for he had reason for dreading the moment when his comrade would take an interest in the affairs of life again.  There was something that Alton must know, and glancing at his hollow face he shrank from telling him.

The struggle had been a long one, for fever had once more seized Alton when he was apparently on the way to recovery, and there had been times when it seemed to Seaforth that two angels kept the long night watches with him beside his comrade’s bed.  One was terrible and shadowy, and stooped lower and lower and above the scarcely breathing form; the other bright and beautiful, an angel of tenderness and mercy, and if Seaforth was fanciful there were excuses for him.  His endurance had been strained to the uttermost as day and night he kept his vigil, while the humanity of the girl who watched with him had become etherealized until her beauty was almost spiritual.  The coldness had gone out of it, and now and then it seemed to the worn-out man that a faint reflection of a light that is not kindled in this world shone through the pity in her eyes.  That spark was all that had been lacking, and Seaforth, who had doubted, bent his head in homage when it came, for it appeared to him that in sloughing off her pride and becoming wholly womanly the girl had reached out in her gentleness and compassion towards the divine.  When at last the turning had been passed, and Alice Deringham went down with her father for a brief rest to Vancouver, she took Seaforth’s limitless respect and gratitude with her, though it occurred to him that she had gone somewhat suddenly as though anxious to escape from the ranch.  They were, however, to return that evening.

“I talked a good deal, Charley, when I was sick?” said Alton.

Seaforth smiled dryly.  “There is no use in denying it, because you did,” he said.

Alton’s face grew clouded.  “I’d have bitten my tongue right through if I’d known.  There were one or two things I’d been through that would come back to me, things one would sooner forget.”

Seaforth appeared thoughtful, but evidently decided that frankness was best.  “There certainly were occasions when your recollections were somewhat realistic.”