d into a single consciousness--that the dead had
come to life, that it was Marette Radisson, the flesh and blood and
living warmth of her, he held in his arms. Like the flash of a picture
on a screen he had seen McTrigger's face close to him, and then his own
head was crushed down again, and if the valley had been filled with the
roar of cannon, he would have heard only one sound, a sobbing voice
crying over and over again, "Jeems--Jeems--Jeems--"

It was McTrigger, in the beginning of the starlight, who alone looked
with clear vision upon the wonder of the thing that was happening.
After a little Kent realized that McTrigger was talking, that a hand
was on his shoulder, that the voice was both joyous and insistent. He
rose to his feet, still holding Marette, her arms clinging to him. Her
breath was sobbing and broken. And it was impossible for Kent to speak.
He seemed to stumble over the distance between them and the lights,
with McTrigger on the other side of Marette. It was McTrigger who
opened a door, and they came into a glow of lamplight. It was a great,
strange-looking room they entered. And over the threshold Marette's
hands dropped from Kent, and Kent stepped back, so that in the light
they faced each other, and in that moment came the marvelous
readjustment from shock and disbelief to a glorious certainty.

Again Kent's brain was as clear as the day he faced death at the head
of the Chute. And swift as a hot barb a fear leaped into him as his
eyes met the eyes of the girl. She was terribly changed. Her face was
white with a whiteness that startled him. It was thin. Her eyes were
great, slumbering pools of violet, almost black in the lamp glow, and
her hair--piled high on her head as he had seen it that first day at
Cardigan's--added to the telltale pallor in her cheeks. A hand trembled
at her throat, and its thinness frightened him. For a space--a flash of
seconds--she looked at him as if possessed of the subconscious fear
that he was not Jim Kent, and then slowly her arms opened, and she
reached them out to him. She did not smile, she did not cry out, she
did not speak his name now; but her arms went round his neck as he took
her to him, and her face dropped on his breast. He looked at McTrigger.
A woman was standing beside him, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, and
she had laid a hand on McTrigger's arm, Kent, looking at them,
understood.

The woman came to him. "I had better take her now, m'sieu," she said.