became all at once vividly and wildly beautiful.  It was as if a curtain had lifted so swiftly the eye could not follow it.  Every tree and shrub and rock stood out in a mellow spotlight; the lake was transformed to a pool of molten silver, and as far as he could see, where shoulders and ridges did not cut him out, the moonlight was playing on the mountains.  In the air was a soft droning like low music, and from a distant crag came the rattle of loosened rocks.  He fancied, for a moment, that Mary Josephine was standing at his side, and that together they were drinking in the wonder of this dream at last come true.  Then a cry came to his lips, a broken, gasping man-cry which he could not keep back, and his heart was filled with anguish.

With all its beauty, all its splendor of quiet and peace, the night was a bitter one for Keith, the bitterest of his life.  He had not believed the worst of Mary Josephine.  He knew he had lost her and that she might despise him, but that she would actually hate him with the desire for a personal vengeance he had not believed.  Was Duggan right?  Was Mary Josephine unfair?  And should he in self-defense fight to poison his own thoughts against her?  His face set hard, and a joyless laugh fell from his lips.  He knew that he was facing the inevitable.  No matter what had happened, he must go on loving Mary Josephine.

All through that night he was awake.  Half a dozen times he went to his blanket, but it was impossible for him to sleep.  At four o’clock he built up the fire and at five roused Duggan.  The old river-man sprang up with the enthusiasm of a boy.  He came back from the lake with his beard and head dripping and his face glowing.  All the mountains held no cheerier comrade than Duggan.

They were on the trail at six o’clock and hour after hour kept steadily up the Little Fork.  The trail grew rougher, narrower, and more difficult to follow, and at intervals Duggan halted to make sure of the way.  At one of these times he said to Keith: 

“Las’ night proved there ain’t no danger from her, Johnny.  I had a dream, an’ dreams goes by contraries an’ always have.  What you dream never comes true.  It’s always the opposite.  An’ I dreamed that little she-devil come up on you when you was asleep, took a big bread-knife, an’ cut your head plumb off!  Yessir, I could see her holdin’ up that head o’ yourn, an’ the blood was drippin’, an’ she was a-laughin’—­”

“Shut up!” Keith fairly yelled the words.  His eyes blazed.  His face was dead white.

With a shrug of his huge shoulders and a sullen grunt Duggan went on.

An hour later the trail narrowed into a short canon, and this canon, to Keith’s surprise, opened suddenly into a beautiful valley, a narrow oasis of green hugged in between the two ranges.  Scarcely had they entered it, when Duggan raised his voice in a series of wild yells and began firing his rifle into the air.