“After that, things happened quickly.  You, my friend, made your false confession to save one who had done you a poor service years ago.  Almost simultaneously with that, Marette had come.  She came quietly, in the night, and went straight to Kedsty.  She told him everything, showed him the written evidence, telling him this evidence was in the hands of others and would be used if anything happened to her.  Her power over him was complete.  As the price of her secrecy she demanded my release, and in that black hour your confession gave Kedsty his opportunity.

“He knew you were lying.  He knew it was Donald who had killed Barkley.  Yet he was willing to sacrifice you to save himself.  And Marette remained in his house, waiting and watching for Donald, while I searched for him on the trails.  That is why she secretly lived in Kedsty’s house.  She knew that Donald would come there sooner or later, if I did not find him and get him away.  And she was plotting how to save you.

“She loved you, Kent—­from that first hour she came to you in the hospital.  And she tried to exact your freedom also as an added price for her secrecy.  But Kedsty had become like a cornered tiger.  If he freed you, he saw his whole world crumbling under his feet.  He, too, went a little mad, I think.  He told Marette that he would not free you, that he would go to the hangman first.  Then, Kent, came the night of your freedom, and a little later—­Donald came to Kedsty’s home.  It was he whom you saw that night out in the storm.  He entered and killed Kedsty.

“Something dragged Marette down to the room that night.  She found Kedsty in his chair—­dead.  Donald was gone.  It was then that you found her there.  Kent, she loved you—­and you will never know how her heart bled when she let you think she had killed Kedsty.  She has told me everything.  It was her fear for Donald, her desire to keep all possible suspicion from him until he was safe, that compelled her not to confide even in you.  Later, when she knew that Donald must be safe, she was going to tell you.  And then—­you were separated at the Chute.”  McTrigger paused, and Kent saw him choke back a grief that was still like the fresh cut of a knife in his heart.

“And O’Connor found out all this?”

McTrigger nodded.  “Yes.  He defied Kedsty’s command to go to Fort Simpson and was on his way back to Athabasca Landing when he found my brother.  It is strange how all things happened, Kent.  But I guess God must have meant it that way.  Donald was dying.  And in dying, for a space, his old reason returned to him.  It was from him, before he died, that O’Connor learned everything.  The story is known everywhere now.  It is marvelous that you did not hear—­”

There came an interruption, the opening of a door.  Anne McTrigger stood looking at them where a little time before she had disappeared with Marette.  There was a glad smile in her face.  Her dark eyes were glowing with a new happiness.  First they rested on McTrigger’s face, and then on Kent’s.