mmed with salt tears, blurring the splendid scene. The last moment had
passed--that for which he had stood with all faith, all spirit--and the
victory was his. The darkness passed out of his soul.

Then, as he stood there, bareheaded, at the height of this
all-satisfying moment, when the last echoing melody of the sledge had
blended in the roar of the crowd, a strange feeling of a presence struck
Neale. Was it spiritual--was it divine--was it God? Or was it only
baneful, fateful--the specter of his accomplished work--a reminder of
the long, gray future?

A hand slipped into his--small, soft, trembling, exquisitely thrilling.
Neale became still as a stone--transfixed. He knew that touch. No dream,
no fancy, no morbid visitation! He felt warm flesh--tender,
clinging fingers; and then the pulse of blood that beat of
hope--love--life--Allie Lee!

36

Slingerland saw Allie Lee married to Neale by that minister of God whose
prayer had followed the joining of the rails.

And to the old trapper had fallen the joy and the honor of giving the
bride away and of receiving her kiss, as though he had been her father.
Then the happy congratulations from General Lodge and his staff; the
merry dinner given the couple, and its toasts warm with praise of the
bride's beauty and the groom's luck and success; Neale's strange, rapt
happiness and Allie's soul shining through her dark-blue eyes--this hour
was to become memorable for Slingerland's future dreams.

Slingerland's sight was not clear when, as the train pulled away, he
waved a last good-bye to his young friends. Now he had no hope, no
prayer left unanswered, except to be again in his beloved hills.

Abruptly he hurried away to the corrals where his pack-train was all
in readiness to start. He did not speak to a man. He had packed a dozen
burros--the largest and completest pack-train he had ever driven. The
abundance of carefully selected supplies, tools, and traps should last
him many years--surely all the years that he would live.

Slingerland did not intend to return to civilization, and he never
even looked back at that blotch on the face of the bluff--that hideous
Roaring City.

He drove the burros at a good trot, his mind at once busy and absent,
happy with the pictures of that last hour, gloomy with the undefined,
unsatisfied cravings of his heart. Friendship with Neale, affection
for Allie, acquainted him with the fact that he had missed something in
life--not