“A long time ago, my mother gave me this Bible,” he said.  “She told me that as long as I carried it, and believed in it, no harm could come to me, and I guess she was right.  It was her first Bible, and mine.  It’s grown old and ragged with me, and the water and snow have faded it.  I’ve come to sort of believe that mother is always near this Book.  I’d like you to have it, Josephine.  It’s the only thing I’ve got to offer you on your birthday.”

While he was speaking he had taken one of her hands and thrust his precious gift into it.  Slowly Josephine raised the little Bible to her breast.  She did not speak, but for a moment Philip saw in her eyes the look for which he would have sacrificed the world; a look that told him more than all the volumes of the earth could have told of a woman’s trust and faith.

He bent his head lower and whispered: 

“To-night, my Josephine—­just this night—­may I wish you all the hope and happiness that God and my Mother can bring you, and kiss you—­once—­”

In that moment’s silence he heard the throbbing of her heart.  She seemed to have ceased breathing, and then, slowly, looking straight into his eyes, she lifted her lips to him, and as one who meets a soul of a thing too sanctified to touch with hands, he kissed her.  Scarcely had the warm sweetness of her lips thrilled his own than she had turned from him, and was gone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

For a time after they had cleared up the supper things Philip sat with Jean close to the fire and smoked.  The half-breed had lapsed again into his gloom and silence.  Two or three times Philip caught Jean watching him furtively.  He made no effort to force a conversation, and when he had finished his pipe he rose and went to the tent which they were to share together.  At last he found himself not unwilling to be alone.  He closed the flap to shut out the still brilliant illumination of the fire, drew a blanket about him, and stretched himself out on the top of his sleeping bag.  He wanted to think.

He closed his eyes to bring back more vividly the picture of Josephine as she had given him her lips to kiss.  This, of all the unusual happenings of that afternoon, seemed most like a dream to him, yet his brain was afire with the reality of it.  His mind struggled again with the hundred questions which he had asked himself that day, and in the end Josephine remained as completely enshrouded in mystery as ever.  Yet of one thing was he convinced.  The oppression of the thing under which Jean and the girl were fighting had become more acute with the turning of their faces homeward.  At Adare House lay the cause of their hopelessness, of Josephine’s grief, and of the gloom under which the half-breed had fallen so completely that night.  Until they reached Adare House he could guess at nothing.  And there—­what would he find?