ly. He
heard the popping of individual firecrackers and the louder bang of one
of the "giants" that always made Nawadlook put her fingers in her pretty
ears. He crept stealthily over a knoll, down through a hollow, and then
up again to the opposite crest. It was as he had thought. He could see
Keok a hundred yards away, standing on the trunk of a fallen tree, and
as he looked, she tossed another bunch of sputtering crackers away from
her. The others were probably circled about her, out of his sight,
watching her performance. He continued cautiously, making his way so
that he could come up behind a thick growth of bush unseen, within a
dozen paces of them. At last he was as near as that to her, and Keok was
still standing on the log with her back toward him.

It puzzled him that he could not see or hear the others. And something
about Keok puzzled him, too. And then his heart gave a sudden throb and
seemed to stop its beating. It was not Keok on the log. And it was not
Nawadlook! He stood up and stepped out from his hiding-place. The
slender figure of the girl on the log turned a little, and he saw the
glint of golden sunshine in her hair. He called out.

"Keok!"

Was he mad? Had the sickness in his head turned his brain?

And then:

"Mary!" he called. "_Mary Standish_!"

She turned. And in that moment Alan Holt's face was the color of gray
rock. It was the dead he had been thinking of, and it was the dead that
had risen before him now. For it was Mary Standish who stood there on
the old cottonwood log, shooting firecrackers in this evening of his
home-coming.

CHAPTER XIII

After that one calling of her name Alan's voice was dead, and he made no
movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a
temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was
rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of
wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to
pass out of his flesh, and his arms hung limp. She was there, _alive!_
He could see the whiteness leave her face and a flush of color come into
it, and he heard a little cry as she jumped down from the log and came
toward him. It had all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed a long
time to Alan.

He saw nothing about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating
up to him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step
away from him, when she saw more clearly what wa