He looked into D’Arcambal’s haggard face as he gave him the blood-stained note, and he knew that in the moment that was to come the master of Fort o’ God and his daughter should be alone.

“I will wait in the portrait-room,” he said, in a low voice, and as he rose to his feet he pressed Jeanne’s hand to his lips.

The old room was as he had left it weeks before.  The picture of Jeanne’s mother still hung with its face to the wall.  There was the same elusive movement of the portrait over the volume of warm air that rose from the floor.  In this room he seemed to breathe again the presence of a warm spirit of life, as he had felt it on the first night—­a spirit that seemed to him to be a part of Jeanne herself, and he thought of the last words of the wife and mother—­of her promise to remain always near those whom she loved, to regain after death the companionship which she could never hope for in life.  And then there came to him a thought of the vast and wonderful mystery of death, and he wondered if it was her spirit that had been with him more than one lonely night, when his camp-fire was low; if it was her presence that had filled him with transcendent dreams of hope and love, coming to him that night beside the rock at Churchill, and leading him at last to Jeanne, for whom she had given up her life.  He heard again the rising of the wind outside and the beating of the storm against the window, and he went softly to see if his vision could penetrate into the white, twisting gloom beyond the glass.  For many minutes he stood, seeing nothing.  And then he heard a sound, and turned to see Jeanne and her father standing in the door.  Glory was in the face of the master of Fort o’ God.  He seemed not to see Philip—­he seemed to see nothing but the picture that was turned against the wall.  He strode across the room, his great shoulders straightened, his shaggy head erect, and with the pride of one revealing first to human eyes the masterpiece of his soul and life he turned the picture so that the radiant face of the wife and mother looked down upon him.  And was it fancy that for a fleeting moment the smile left the beautiful lips, and a light, soft and luminous, pleading for love and forgiveness, filled the eyes of Jeanne’s mother?  Philip trembled.  Jeanne came across to him silently, and crept into his arms.  And then, slowly, the master of Fort o’ God turned toward them and stretched out both of his great arms.

“My children!” he said.

XXV

All that night the storm came out of the north and east.  Hours after Jeanne and her father had left him Philip went quietly from his room, passed down the hall, and opened the outer door.  He could hear the gale whistling over the top of the great rock, and moaning in the spruce and cedar forest, and he closed the door after him, and buried himself in the darkness and wind.  He bowed his head to the stinging