the thrill of the warm, parting pressure of Josephine's
hand; he saw the gratitude in her eyes; he heard her voice, low and
tremulous, asking him to come again to-morrow evening. His brain was in
a strange whirl of excitement, and he laughed--laughed with gladness
which he had not felt before in all the days of his life.

He had told a great many things about Peter God that night; of the
man's life in the little cabin, his loneliness, his aloofness, and the
mystery of him. Philip had asked no questions of Josephine and her
father, and more than once he had caught that almost tender gratitude
in Josephine's eyes. And at least twice he had seen the swift, haunting
fear--the first time when he told of Peter God's coming and goings at
Port MacPherson, and again when he mentioned a patrol of the Royal
Northwest Mounted Police that had passed Peter God's cabin while Philip
was there, laid up during those weeks of darkness and storm with a
fractured leg.

Philip told how tenderly Peter God nursed him, and how their
acquaintance grew into brotherhood during the long gray nights when the
stars gleamed like pencil-points and the foxes yapped incessantly. He
had seen the dewy shimmer of tears in Josephine's eyes. He had noted
the tense lines in Colonel McCloud's face. But he had asked them no
questions, he had made no effort to unmask the secret which they so
evidently desired to keep from him.

Now, alone in the cool night, he asked himself a hundred questions, and
yet with a feeling that he understood a great deal of what they had
kept from him. Something had whispered to him then--and whispered to
him now--that Peter God was not Peter God's right name, and that to
Josephine McCloud and her father he was a brother and a son. This
thought, so long as he could think it without a doubt, filled his cup
of hope to overflowing. But the doubt persisted. It was like a spark
that refused to go out. Who was Peter God? What was Peter God, the
half-wild fox-hunter, to Josephine McCloud? Yes--he could be but that
one thing! A brother. A black sheep. A wanderer. A son who had
disappeared--and was now found. But if he was that, only that, why
would they not tell him? The doubt sputtered up again.

Philip did not go to bed. He was anxious for the day, and the evening
that was to follow. A woman had unsettled his world. His mica mountain
became an unimportant reality. Barrow's greatness no longer loomed up
for him. He walked until he was tir