breaking over the mountains and
reflecting their glow in the valley. Donald MacDonald had lifted his face
to the sunrise; out from under his battered hat the morning breeze sweeping
through the valley of the Frazer tossed his shaggy hair; his great owl-gray
beard swept his breast; his broad, gaunt shoulders were hunched a little
forward as he looked into the east. Again Aldous looked into Joanne's eyes.

"It's not the gold, but MacDonald, that's taking me north, Ladygray. And
it's not the gold that is taking MacDonald. It is strange, almost
unbelievedly strange--what I am going to tell you. To-day we are seeking a
grave--for you. And up there, two hundred miles in the north, another grave
is calling MacDonald. I am going with him. It just happens that the gold is
there. You wouldn't guess that for more than forty years that blessed old
wanderer ahead of us has loved a dead woman, would you? You wouldn't think
that for nearly half a century, year in and year out, winter and summer
alike, he has tramped the northern mountains--a lost spirit with but one
desire in life--to find at last her resting-place? And yet it is so,
Ladygray. I guess I am the only living creature to whom he has opened his
heart in many a long year. A hundred times beside our campfire I have
listened to him, until at last his story seems almost to be a part of my
own. He may be a little mad, but it is a beautiful madness."

He paused.

"Yes," whispered Joanne. "Go on--John Aldous."

"It's--hard to tell," he continued. "I can't put the feeling of it in
words, the spirit of it, the wonder of it. I've tried to write it, and I
couldn't. Her name was Jane. He has never spoken of her by any other name
than that, and I've never asked for the rest of it. They were kids when
their two families started West over the big prairies in Conestoga wagons.
They grew up sweethearts. Both of her parents, and his mother, died before
they were married. Then, a little later, his father died, and they were
alone. I can imagine what their love must have been. I have seen it still
living in his eyes, and I have seen it in his strange hour-long dreams
after he has talked of her. They were always together. He has told me how
they roamed the mountains hand in hand in their hunts; how she was comrade
and chum when he went prospecting. He has opened his lonely old heart to
me--a great deal. He's told me how they used to be alone for months at a
time in the mountains, the things