Out of this narrow valley between two ridges, an hour ago choked with living spruce and cedar, rose up a swirling, terrifying heat.  Down into this pit of death Black Roger stood looking, and David heard a strange moaning coming in his breath.  His great, bare arms were black and scarred with heat; his hair was burned; his shirt was torn from his shoulders.  When David spoke—­and Black Roger turned at the sound—­his eyes glared wildly out of a face that was like a black mask.  And when he saw it was David who had spoken, his great body seemed to sag, and with an unintelligible cry he pointed down.

David, staring, saw nothing with his half-blind eyes, but under his feet he felt a sudden giving way, and the fire-eaten tangle of earth and roots broke off like a rotten ledge, and with it both he and Black Roger went crashing into the depths below, smothered in an avalanche of ash and sizzling earth.  At the bottom David lay for a moment, partly stunned.  Then his fingers clutched a bit of living fire, and with a savage cry he staggered to his feet and looked to see Black Roger.  For a space his eyes were blinded, and when at last he could see, he made out Black Roger, fifty feet away, dragging himself on his hands and knees through the blistering muck of the fire.  And then, as he stared, the stricken giant came to the charred remnant of a stump and crumpled over it with a great cry, moaning again that name—­

“Andre—­Andre—­”

David hurried to him, and as he put his hands under Black Roger’s arms to help him to his feet, he saw that the charred stump was not a stump, but the fire-shriveled corpse of Andre, the Broken Man!

Horror choked back speech on his own lips.  Black Roger looked up at him, and a great breath came in a sob out of his body.  Then, suddenly, he seemed to get grip of himself, and his burned and bleeding fingers closed about David’s hand at his shoulder.

“I knew he was coming here,” he said, the words forcing themselves with an effort through his swollen lips.  “He came home—­to die.”

“Home—?”

“Yes.  His mother and father were buried here nearly thirty years ago, and he worshiped them.  Look at him, Carrigan.  Look at him closely.  For he is the man you have wanted all these years, the finest man God ever made, Roger Audemard!  When he saw the fire, he came to shield their graves from the flames.  And now he is dead!”

A moan came to his lips, and the weight of his body grew so heavy that David had to exert his strength to keep him from falling.

“And you?” he cried.  “For God’s sake, Audemard—­tell me—­”

“I, m’sieu?  Why, I am only St. Pierre Audemard, his brother.”

And with that his head dropped heavily, and he was like a dead man in David’s arms.