, and his hat dropped from his hand, and he stood and stared;
and what he was looking at, the sun fell upon in a great golden splash, and
Joanne's hand gripped John's, and held to it tightly. Against the wall,
hanging as they had hung for forty years, were a woman's garments: a hood,
a shawl, a dress, and an apron that was half in tatters; and on the floor
under these things were _a pair of shoes_. And as Donald MacDonald went to
them, his arms reaching out, his lips moving, forgetful of all things but
that he had come home, and Jane was here, Joanne drew Aldous softly to the
door, and they went out into the day.

Joanne did not speak, and Aldous did not urge her. He saw her white throat
throbbing as if there were a little heart beating there, and her eyes were
big and dark and velvety, like the eyes of a fawn that had been frightened.
There was a thickness in his own throat, and he found that it was difficult
for him to see far out over the plain. They waited near the horses. Fifty
yards from them ran the stream; a clear, beautiful stream which flowed in
the direction from which the mysterious ramble of thunder seemed to come.
This, Aldous knew, was the stream of gold. In the sand he saw wreckage
which he knew were the ancient rockers; a shovel, thrust shaft-deep, still
remained where it had last been planted.

Perhaps for ten minutes Donald MacDonald remained in the cabin. Then he
came out. Very carefully he closed the door. His shoulders were thrown
back. His head was held high. He looked like a monarch.

And his voice was calm.

"Everything is there, Johnny--everything but the gold," he said. "They took
that."

Now he spoke to Joanne.

"You better not go with us into the other cabins," he said.

"Why?" she asked softly.

"Because--there's death in them all."

"I am going," she said.

From the window of the largest cabin MacDonald pulled the sapling shutter,
and, like the other, it fell at his feet. Then they opened the door, and
entered; and here the sunlight revealed the cabin's ghastly tragedy. The
first thing that they saw, because it was most terrible, was a rough table,
half over which lay the shrunken thing that had once been a man. A part of
its clothes still remained, but the head had broken from its column, and
the white and fleshless skull lay facing them. Out of tattered and
dust-crumbling sleeves reached the naked bones of hands and arms. And on
the floor lay another of these things, in a crum