“Are we going that way?” she asked.

He had been thinking as they had climbed up the mountain.  Off there, where she was pointing, were his friends, and hers; between them and that wandering tribe of the totem people on the Kwadocha there were no human beings.  Nothing but the unbroken peace of the mountains, in which they were safe.  He had ceased to fear their immensity—­was no longer disturbed by the thought that in their vast and trackless solitude he might lose himself forever.  After what had passed, their gleaming peaks were beckoning to him, and he was confident that he could find his way back to the Finley and down to Hudson’s Hope.  What a surprise it would be to Father Roland when they dropped in on him some day, he and Marge!  His heart beat excitedly as he told her about it, described the great distance they must travel, and what a wonderful journey it would be, with that glorious country at the end of it....  “We’ll find your mother, then,” he whispered.  They talked a great deal about her mother and Father Roland as they made their way down into the valley, and whenever they stopped to rest she had new questions to ask, and each time there was that trembling doubt in her voice.  “I wonder whether it’s true.”  And each time he assured her that it was.

“I have been thinking that it was Nisikoos who sent to her that picture you wanted to destroy,” he said once.  “Nisikoos must have known.”

“Then why didn’t she tell me?” she flashed.

“Because, it may be that she didn’t want to lose you—­and that she didn’t send the picture until she knew that she was not going to live very long.”

The girl’s eyes darkened, and then—­slowly—­there came back the softer glow into them.

“I loved—­Nisikoos,” she said.

It was sunset when they began making their first camp in a cedar thicket, where David shot a porcupine for Tara and Baree.  After their supper they sat for a while in the glow of the stars, and after that Marge snuggled down in her cedar bed and went to sleep.  But before she closed her eyes she put her arms about his neck and kissed him good-night.  For a long time after that he sat awake, thinking of the wonderful dream he had dreamed all his life, and which at last had come true.

* * * * *

Day after day they travelled steadily into the east and south.  The mountains swallowed them, and their feet trod the grass of many strange valleys.  Strange—­and yet now and then David saw something he had seen once before, and he knew that he had not lost the trail.  They travelled slowly, for there was no longer need of haste; and in that land of plenty there was more of pleasure than inconvenience in their foraging for what they ate.  In her haste in making up the contents of the pack Marge had seized what first came to her hands in the way of provisions, and fortunately the main part of their stock was a 20-pound sack of oatmeal.  Of this they made bannock