her. A memory rose up and confronted her, and a sudden joyous anxiety
thrilled her.

"Do you really think that, Buck?" she cried eagerly. "Do you? Do you?"

"Things seem changed, little gal," he said, half ruefully. "Seems to
me the past week's been years an' years long." He laughed. "Maybe I
got older. Maybe I think those things now, same as most folks think
'em--when they get older."

But Joan was full of her own thought, and she went on eagerly, passing
his reasons by.

"Listen, Buck, when Aunt Mercy told me all my troubles, she told me
something else. But it seemed so small by the side of those other
things, that I--that I almost forgot it. What was it? Her words? Yes,
yes, I asked her, was there no hope for me? No means by which I could
be saved from my fate? And she said that my only hope lay in finding a
love that was stronger than death. These were her words----

"'I loved your father with a passion nothing, no disaster could
destroy. Go you, child, and find you such a love. Go you and find a
love so strong that no disaster can kill it. And maybe life may still
have some compensations for you, maybe it will lift the curse from
your suffering shoulders. It--it is the only thing in the world that
is stronger than disaster. It is the only thing in the world that is
stronger than--death.'"

Her words dropped to a whisper as she finished speaking, and she
waited, like a criminal awaiting sentence, for the man's judgment on
them. Her eyes were downcast, and her rounded bosom was stirring
tumultuously. What would he say? What would he think? And yet she must
have told him. Was he not the one person in the world who held her
fate in his hands? Yes, he must know all there was in her mind. And
she knew in her heart that he would understand as she wanted him to
understand.

Buck suddenly reined Caesar in, and brought him to a standstill,
turning him about so that he looked back upon the world they were
leaving behind them forever. In silence Joan responded to his
movement, and her horse closed up against the other.

"Guess your auntie's notions were all queer, so queer they're mighty
hard to understand," he said reflectively. "But seems to me she's hit
a big truth some way. That curse is sure lifted--sure, sure."

He pointed at the grim outline of Devil's Hill, now fading in the
distance.

"Look ther' yonder. Yonder's the disaster, yonder is--death. An'
we--we've sure passed through it. She's right. Our love