“That don’t matter,” Mary raised her deep eyes, they were burning with superstitious intentness; “but I have a message for you—­you best heed it.  We don’t stand for strangers hanging around here.  See there!” Mary pointed to The Rock—­Thornton’s excited fancy caught the wavering outlines of The Ship.

“All that’s wise—­goes with that.”  Mary turned away.  “You best heed!” she muttered as Jed had, and slunk off.

Thornton shivered.  He had not eaten for many hours; he was weary and beaten.

“My God!” he muttered as he mounted the horse; “what—­a conspiracy!  What a hole to get away from.  She thinks I’m looking for stills.  Stills!” he gave a weak laugh.

Joan stood until she heard the sound of the horse’s hoofs on the road, then she turned to the freshly brushed but empty hearth and knelt, shivering.

“Aha, I am warm.  I have seen the fire.”  Her eyes clung to the words as if they were living flames.  She was not conscious of thought, but she seemed to know that she had only seen the fire before but that now she was to feel it.  A glow was stirring within her—­a bright, flaming thing that lighted her way, on before—­the long, long splendid way on which responsibility rested like a halo.

She held within her soul all that had gone into her making—­she belonged, in a great and demanding significance, to—­Doris and Doris’s people.  Doris’s and her own!  Her own!  She must prove herself—­behind the shield; she must make the real her ideal.  She must not be afraid.  Fear was the only thing that mattered.

Her whole life had been but an outline up to now; she must fill it in!  She must not be afraid to set sail.

Who had said that to her?

“Set sail.  Bids—­you set sail!”

So engrossed was Joan in the flooding tide of thought, so entirely was she abandoning herself to it, that it was only when she heard Doris speak that she turned.

“Joan, we’ve brought Clive!  We met him on the way.”

Joan did not rise.  With hands clasped in her lap she faced the little group in the doorway.

Her eyes were filled with the golden light of day—­she waited; all her life, she knew, she had been preparing for this moment.  She saw Cameron’s start of surprise; his wonder and doubt.  Then she saw him gathering strength as for the last lap of a hard race.

“So I have found you!” he said, and pushing past Martin and Doris he came across the room with outstretched hands.

Something was calling in the tone which words could not convey, and Joan could not answer.  It was like hearing a voice where before there had been but echoes.

“I always knew that I would find you!”

Cameron had reached the girl on the floor; he bent and drew her to her feet.  His eyes were laughing; he saw her effort to answer him; her seeking to—­understand what he had already learned.