lley. He was exhausted. His hands were bruised and bleeding. Darkness
shut him in when he went on.

When he rounded the elbow of the mountain, he did not try to keep back
the joyous cry that came to his lips. Ahead of him there were lights. A
few of them were scattered, but nearest to him he saw a cluster of
them, like the glow that comes from a number of illumined windows. He
quickened his pace as he drew nearer to them, and at last he wanted to
run. And then something stopped him, and it seemed to him that his
heart had risen into his throat and was choking him until he could not
breathe.

It was a man's voice he heard, calling through the twilight gloom a
name. "Marette--Marette--Marette--"

Kent tried to cry out, but his breath came only in a gasp. He felt
himself trembling. He reached out his arms, and a strange madness
rushed like fire into his brain.

Again the voice called, "Marette--Marette--Marette--"

The cup in the valley echoed the name. It rolled softly up the
mountainside. The air trembled with it, whispered it, passed it on--and
suddenly the madness in Kent found voice, and he shouted,

"Marette--Marette--"

He ran on. His knees felt weak. He shouted the name again, and the
other voice was silent. Things loomed up out of the mist ahead of him,
between him and the glowing windows. Some one--two people--were
advancing to meet him, doubtfully, wonderingly. Kent was staggering,
but he cried the name again, and this time it was a woman's cry that
answered, and one of the two came toward him swift as a flash of light.

Three paces apart they stood, and in that gloom of the after-twilight
their burning eyes looked at each other, while for a space their bodies
remained stricken in the face of this miracle of a great and merciful
God.

The dead had risen. By a mighty effort Kent reached out his arms, and
Marette swayed to him. When the other man came up, he found them
crumpled to their knees on the earth, clasped like children in each
other's arms. And as Kent raised his face, he saw that it was Sandy
McTrigger who was looking down at him, the man whose life he had saved
at Athabasca Landing.

CHAPTER XXV

How long it was before his brain cleared, Kent never could have told.
It might have been a minute or an hour. Every vital force that was in
him had concentrated into a single consciousness--that the dead had
come to life, that it was Marette Radisson, the flesh and blood and
living warmth