“And there is our new world.  Let us forget the old.  Shall we, Mary Josephine?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and her hand sought his again and crept into it, warm and confident.

XV

They went on through the golden morning, the earth damp under their feet, the air filled with its sweet incense, on past scattered clumps of balsams and cedars until they came to the river and looked down on its yellow sand-bars glistening in the sun.  The town was hidden.  They heard no sound from it.  And looking up the great Saskatchewan, the river of mystery, of romance, of glamour, they saw before them, where the spruce walls seemed to meet, the wide-open door through which they might pass into the western land beyond.  Keith pointed it out.  And he pointed out the yellow bars, the glistening shores of sand, and told her how even as far as this, a thousand miles by river—­those sands brought gold with them from the mountains, the gold whose treasure-house no man had ever found, and which must be hidden up there somewhere near the river’s end.  His dream, like Duggan’s, had been to find it.  Now they would search for it together.

Slowly he was picking his way so that at last they came to the bit of cleared timber in which was his old home.  His heart choked him as they drew near.  There was an uncomfortable tightness in his breath.  The timber was no longer “clear.”  In four years younger generations of life had sprung up among the trees, and the place was jungle-ridden.  They were within a few yards of the house before Mary Josephine saw it, and then she stopped suddenly with a little gasp.  For this that she faced was not desertion, was not mere neglect.  It was tragedy.  She saw in an instant that there was no life in this place, and yet it stood as if tenanted.  It was a log chateau with a great, red chimney rising at one end curtains and shades still hung at the windows.  There were three chairs on the broad veranda that looked riverward.  But two of the windows were broken, and the chairs were falling into ruin.  There was no life.  They were facing only the ghosts of life.

A swift glance into Keith’s face told her this was so.  His lips were set tight.  There was a strange look in his face.  Hand in hand they had come up, and her fingers pressed his tighter now.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It is John Keith’s home as he left it four years ago,” he replied.

The suspicious break in his voice drew her eyes from the chateau to his own again.  She could see him fighting.  There was a twitching in his throat.  His hand was gripping hers until it hurt.

“John Keith?” she whispered softly.

“Yes, John Keith.”

She inclined her head so that it rested lightly and affectionately against his arm.

“You must have thought a great deal of him, Derry.”

“Yes.”

He freed her hand, and his fists clenched convulsively.  She could feel the cording of the muscles in his arm, his face was white, and in his eyes was a fixed stare that startled her.  He fumbled in a pocket and drew out a key.