e than usual, and that I was glad you were
resting, I think I heard him swallow hard. He thinks a lot of you,
Derry. And then he asked me WHICH injury it was that hurt you, and I
told him the one in the head. What did he mean? Were you hurt somewhere
else, Derry?"

Keith swallowed hard, too. "Not to speak of," he said. "You see, Mary
Josephine, I've got a tremendous surprise for you, if you'll promise it
won't spoil your appetite. Last night was the first night I've spent in
a real bed for three years."

And then, without waiting for her questions, he began to tell her the
epic story of John Keith. With her sitting opposite him, her beautiful,
wide-open, gray eyes looking at him with amazement as she sensed the
marvelous coincidence of their meeting, he told it as he had not told
it to McDowell or even to Miriam Kirkstone. A third time the facts were
the same. But it was John Keith now who was telling John Keith's story
through the lips of an unreal and negative Conniston. He forgot his own
breakfast, and a look of gloom settled on Wallie's face when he peered
in through the door and saw that their coffee and toast were growing
cold. Mary Josephine leaned a little over the table. Not once did she
interrupt Keith. Never had he dreamed of a glory that might reflect his
emotions as did her eyes. As he swept from pathos to storm, from the
madness of long, black nights to starvation and cold, as he told of
flight, of pursuit, of the merciless struggle that ended at last in the
capture of John Keith, as he gave to these things words and life
pulsing with the beat of his own heart, he saw them revisioned in those
wonderful gray eyes, cold at times with fear, warm and glowing at other
times with sympathy, and again shining softly with a glory of pride and
love that was meant for him alone. With him she was present in the
little cabin up in the big Barren. Until he told of those days and
nights of hopeless desolation, of racking cough and the nearness of
death, and of the comradeship of brothers that had come as a final
benediction to the hunter and the hunted, until in her soul she was
understanding and living those terrible hours as they two had lived
them, he did not know how deep and dark and immeasurably tender that
gray mystery of beauty in her eyes could be. From that hour he
worshiped them as he worshiped no other part of her.

"And from all that you came back the same day I came," she said in a
low, awed voice. "You