“It is a shocking surprise, Derry.  I meant it to be.  I’ve been planning it for years and years and years!  Please take off your coat—­it’s dripping wet!—­and sit down near me, on that stool!”

Again he obeyed.  He was big for the stool.

“You are glad to see me, aren’t you, Derry?”

She was leaning over the edge of the big chair, and one of her hands went to his damp hair, brushing it back.  It was a wonderful touch.  He had never felt anything like it before in his life, and involuntarily he bent his head a little.  In a moment she had hugged it up close to her.

“You are glad, aren’t you, Derry?  Say ‘yes.’”

“Yes,” he whispered.

He could feel the swift, excited beating of her heart.

“And I’m never going back again—­to them,” he heard her say, something suddenly low and fierce in her voice.  “Never!  I’m going to stay with you always, Derry.  Always!”

She put her lips close to his ear and whispered mysteriously.  “They don’t know where I am.  Maybe they think I’m dead.  But Colonel Reppington knows.  I told him I was coming if I had to walk round the world to get here.  He said he’d keep my secret, and gave me letters to some awfully nice people over here.  I’ve been over six months.  And when I saw your name in one of those dry-looking, blue-covered, paper books the Mounted Police get out, I just dropped down on my knees and thanked the good Lord, Derry.  I knew I’d find you somewhere—­sometime.  I haven’t slept two winks since leaving Montreal!  And I guess I really frightened that big man with the terrible mustaches, for when I rushed in on him tonight, dripping wet, and said, ’I’m Miss Mary Josephine Conniston, and I want my brother,’ his eyes grew bigger and bigger until I thought they were surely going to pop out at me.  And then he swore.  He said, ‘My Gawd, I didn’t know he had a sister!’”

Keith’s heart was choking him.  So this wonderful little creature was Derwent Conniston’s sister!  And she was claiming him.  She thought he was her brother!

“—­And I love him because he treated me so nicely,” she was saying.  “He really hugged me, Derry.  I guess he didn’t think I was away past eighteen.  And he wrapped me up in a big oilskin, and we came up here.  And—­O Derry, Derry—­why did you do it?  Why didn’t you let me know?  Don’t you—­want me here?”

He heard, but his mind had swept beyond her to the little cabin in the edge of the Great Barren where Derwent Conniston lay dead.  He heard the wind moaning, as it had moaned that night the Englishman died, and he saw again that last and unspoken yearning in Conniston’s eyes.  And he knew now why Conniston’s face had followed him through the gray gloom and why he had felt the mysterious presence of him long after he had gone.  Something that was Conniston entered into him now.  In the throbbing chaos of his brain a voice was whispering, “She is yours, she is yours.”