junior.  In the letters Mary Josephine had spoken of him as “poor Egbert,” pitying instead of condemning him, though it was Egbert who had brought tragedy and separation upon them.  One night Egbert had broken open the Conniston safe and in the darkness had had a fight and a narrow escape from his uncle, who laid the crime upon Derwent.  And Derwent, in whom Egbert must have confided, had fled to America that the cripple might be saved, with the promise that some day he would send for Mary Josephine.  He was followed by the uncle’s threat that if he ever returned to England, he would be jailed.  Not long afterward “poor Egbert” was found dead in bed, fearfully contorted.  Keith guessed there had been something mentally as well as physically wrong with him.

“—­And I was going to send for you,” he said, as they came to the level of the valley.  “My plans were made, and I was going to send for you, when this came.”

He stopped, and in a few tense, breathless moments Mary Josephine read the ninth and last letter he had taken from the Englishman’s chest.  It was from her uncle.  In a dozen lines it stated that she, Mary Josephine, was dead, and it reiterated the threat against Derwent Conniston should he ever dare to return to England.

A choking cry came to her lips.  “And that—­that was it?”

“Yes, that—­and the hurt in my head,” he said, remembering the part he must play.  “They came at about the same time, and the two of them must have put the grain of sand in my brain.”

It was hard to lie now, looking straight into her face that had gone suddenly white, and with her wonderful eyes burning deep into his soul.

She did not seem, for an instant, to hear his voice or sense his words.  “I understand now,” she was saying, the letter crumpling in her fingers.  “I was sick for almost a year, Derry.  They thought I was going to die.  He must have written it then, and they destroyed my letters to you, and when I was better they told me you were dead, and then I didn’t write any more.  And I wanted to die.  And then, almost a year ago, Colonel Reppington came to me, and his dear old voice was so excited that it trembled, and he told me that he believed you were alive.  A friend of his had just returned from British Columbia, and this friend told him that three years before, while on a grizzly shooting trip, he had met a man named Conniston, an Englishman.  We wrote a hundred letters up there and found the man, Jack Otto, who was in the mountains with you, and then I knew you were alive.  But we couldn’t find you after that, and so I came—­”

He would have wagered that she was going to cry, but she fought the tears back, smiling.

“And—­and I’ve found you!” she finished triumphantly.

She snuggled close to him, and he slipped an arm about her waist, and they walked on.  She told him about her arrival in Halifax, how Colonel Reppington had given her letters to nice people in Montreal and Winnipeg, and how it happened one day that she found his name in one of the Mounted Police blue books, and after that came on as fast as she could to surprise him at Prince Albert.  When she came to that point, Keith pointed once more into the west and said: