.

She looked from him to old Donald, and shivered.

"The flap of my tepee was open," she said slowly. "I thought I was awake. I
thought I could see the glow of the fire. But it was a dream--a _dream_,
only it was horrible! For as I looked I saw a face out there in the light,
a white, searching face--and it was his face!"

"Whose face?"

"Mortimer FitzHugh's," she shuddered.

Tenderly Aldous led her back to the tent.

"Yes, it was surely an unpleasant dream, dear," he comforted her. "Try and
sleep again. You must get all the rest you can."

He closed the flap after her, and turned back toward MacDonald. The old
hunter had disappeared. It was ten minutes before he came in from out of
the darkness. He went straight to Aldous.

"Johnny, you was asleep!"

"I'm afraid I was, Mac--just for a minute."

MacDonald's fingers gripped his arm.

"Jus' for a minute, Johnny--an' in that minute you lost the chance of your
life!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean"--and old Donald's voice was filled with a low, choking tremble
that Aldous had never heard in it before--"I mean that it weren't no dream,
Johnny! Mortimer FitzHugh was in this camp to-night!"

CHAPTER XXV

Donald MacDonald's startling assertion that Mortimer FitzHugh had been in
the camp, and that Joanne's dream was not a dream, but reality, brought a
gasp of astonishment and disbelief from Aldous. Before he had recovered
sufficiently from his amazement to speak, MacDonald was answering the
question in his mind.

"I woke quicker'n you, Johnny," he said. "She was just coming out of the
tepee, an' I heard something running off through the brush. I thought mebby
it was a wolverine, or a bear, an' I didn't move until she cried out your
name an' you jumped up. If she had seen a bear in the fire-glow she
wouldn't have thought it was Mortimer FitzHugh, would she? It's possible,
but it ain't likely, though I do say it's mighty queer why he should be in
this camp alone. It's up to us to watch pretty close until daylight."

"He wouldn't be here alone," asserted Aldous. "Let's get out of the light,
Mac. If you're right, the whole gang isn't far away!"

"They ain't in rifle-shot," said MacDonald. "I heard him running a hundred
yards out there. That's the queer thing about it! Why didn't they jump on
us when they had the chance?"

"We'll hope that it was a dream," replied Aldous. "If Joanne was dreaming
of FitzHugh, and while still half asleep saw something in