tty hair--and hers--is wonderful!"

"I don't remember," said Keith quietly, "that I promised you I wouldn't
fall in love. I'm desperately in love, and with you, Mary Josephine.
And as for Miss Kirkstone's lovely hair--I wouldn't trade one of yours
for all she has on her head."

At that, with a riotous little laugh of joy, Mary Josephine swiftly
unbound her hair and let it smother about his face and shoulders.
"Sometimes I have a terribly funny thought, Derry," she whispered. "If
we hadn't always been sweethearts, back there at home, and if you
hadn't always liked my hair, and kissed me, and told me I was pretty,
I'd almost think you weren't my brother!"

Keith laughed and was glad that her hair covered his face. During those
wonderful first days of the summer they were inseparable, except when
matters of business took Keith away. During these times he prepared for
eventualities. The Keith properties in Prince Albert, he estimated,
were worth at least a hundred thousand dollars, and he learned from
McDowell that they would soon go through a process of law before being
turned over to his fortunate inheritors. Before that time, however, he
knew that his own fate would be sealed one way or the other, and now
that he had Mary Josephine to look after, he made a will, leaving
everything to her, and signing himself John Keith. This will he carried
in an envelope pinned inside his shirt. As Derwent Conniston he
collected one thousand two hundred and sixty dollars for three and a
half years back wage in the Service. Two hundred and sixty of this he
kept in his own pocket. The remaining thousand he counted out in new
hundred-dollar bills under Mary Josephine's eyes, sealed the bills in
another envelope, and gave the envelope to her.

"It's safer with you than with me," he excused himself. "Fasten it
inside your dress. It's our grub-stake into the mountains."

Mary Josephine accepted the treasure with the repressed delight of one
upon whose fair shoulders had been placed a tremendous responsibility.

There were days of both joy and pain for Keith. For even in the fullest
hours of his happiness there was a thing eating at his heart, a thing
that was eating deeper and deeper until at times it was like a
destroying flame within him. One night he dreamed; he dreamed that
Conniston came to his bedside and wakened him, and that after wakening
him he taunted him in ghoulish glee and told him that in bequeathing
him a sister he had g