Another half-hour, and he came up out of the dip behind Sokwenna’s cabin and tried the door.  It was locked.  A voice answered his knock, and he called out his name.  The bolt shot back, the door opened, and he stepped in.  Nawadlook stood at her bedroom door, a gun in her hands.  Keok faced him, holding grimly to a long knife, and between them, staring white-faced at him as he entered, was Mary Standish.  She came forward to meet him, and he heard a whisper from Nawadlook, and saw Keok follow her swiftly through the door into the other room.

Mary Standish held out her hands to him a little blindly, and the tremble in her throat and the look in her eyes betrayed the struggle she was making to keep from breaking down and crying out in gladness at his coming.  It was that look that sent a flood of joy into his heart, even when he saw the torture and hopelessness behind it.  He held her hands close, and into her eyes he smiled in such a way that he saw them widen, as if she almost disbelieved; and then she drew in a sudden quick breath, and her fingers clung to him.  It was as if the hope that had deserted her came in an instant into her face again.  He was not excited.  He was not even perturbed, now that he saw that light in her eyes and knew she was safe.  But his love was there.  She saw it and felt the force of it behind the deadly calmness with which he was smiling at her.  She gave a little sob, so low it was scarcely more than a broken breath; a little cry that came of wonder—­understanding—­and unspeakable faith in this man who was smiling at her so confidently in the face of the tragedy that had come to destroy her.

“Rossland is in your cabin,” she whispered.  “And John Graham is back there—­somewhere—­coming this way.  Rossland says that if I don’t go to him of my own free will—­”

He felt the shudder that ran through her.

“I understand the rest,” he said.  They stood silent for a moment.  The gray-cheeked thrush was singing on the roof.  Then, as if she had been a child, he took her face between his hands and bent her head back a little, so that he was looking straight into her eyes, and so near that he could feel the sweet warmth of her breath.

“You didn’t make a mistake the day I went away?” he asked.  “You—­love me?”

“Yes.”

For a moment longer he looked into her eyes.  Then he stood back from her.  Even Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh.  It was strange, they thought—­Keok with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun—­for the bird was singing, and Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was very still.

Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little window in the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across his knees, old Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and something in the manner of his going brought back a vision of another day long ago when Ghost Kloof had rung with the cries of battle, and the hands now gnarled and twisted with age had played their part in the heroic stand of his people against the oppressors from the farther north.