know,
nor adopted by law-an' I reckons hit will be val'able some day, fer a
city stranger told me oncet thet thar's coal on hit. So my leetle gal
haint ergoin' ter start her new life penniless, an' ... an' now I wants
ter name ye ter be her guardeen till she air growed up. I hopes yo'll
accept ther charge, fer I trusts ye, son."

"Accept? Indeed I will, and it makes me mighty happy to realize that I
mean something to both of you. I've been playing that she was my sister,
but now she will really be as much to me as though she were."

The two men clasped hands again in full understanding, and as a symbol
of a trust bestowed and accepted.

* * * * *

At sunrise the following morning Donald once more turned his face toward
the valley, whence he had climbed lightheartedly less than two days
previous. He had come with a beloved companion. He went alone, save for
crowding memories--some bright, but far more black as storm-clouds and
shot with malignant flashes of lightning.

His vacation--a travesty on the name--was ended; the castle which his
dreams had built on this remote mountain was a shattered ruin. Yet,
through the dark series of crowding events, ran a fine thread of
gleaming gold, and Donald felt that it had not been broken by his
departure. No, it was spun by Destiny to stretch on and on into the
unseen future, at once for him a guide-line to a higher manhood, and a
tie binding his life to that of the girl whose pathway--starting so far
removed from his--had so strangely converged with it.

To continue his hunting trip in another location, with Mike no longer
his companion in it, was unthinkable. The empty spaces made the void in
his heart unbearable, and he at once returned to Boston and joined his
family at their summer home, to their amazement and delight.

But the man now returned to them after little more than a week's absence
was vastly different from the one who had left. All marked the
alteration in him, and over and over in family council tried, vainly, to
account for it, for Donald had withheld far more than he told of his
experiences, and minimized what he did tell.

But he knew, as well as they, that a new chord had been struck within
him, and by its vibrations his whole life was being tuned anew.
Something of the old boyishness and impetuosity was gone, a new
purposefulness--not of the will but rather of the spirit--had supplanted
it and engendered an unwonted sere