r all he ever
could have gained of delight and comfort. Happy Sim Gage! to have a
woman like Mary, his wife, stand and weep for him now. He had lost her
had she ever seen his face, and now, at least, he owned her tears. A
vast and noble flood carried happy Sim Gage out to the ocean at the end
of all, to the rest and the absorption and the peace.

Mary Gage pushed back the bandage from her eyes furtively, unable to
obey longer any command which cut her off from this new world to which
she had come. Before she dropped the bandage once more she had caught
sight of a figure not looking toward her at the moment.

Allen Barnes was standing with his head up, his eyes looking out over
the abysmal scene below. Behind his back he had gripped tight together
his long and sinewy hands. He was a lean and broad man, so she
thought. He stood in the uniform of his country, made for manly men,
and beseeming only such. The neatness of good rearing even now was
apparent in every line of him. Dust seemed not to have touched him.
He was clean and trim and fine, a picture of an officer and a gentleman.

Light, and the new music of the spheres--to whom did she owe those
things? It was to this man standing yonder.

"McQueston," she heard a sharp voice command, "take your men and go
down to the lower dam--any way you can get across the mountains. Bring
your report up by one of these cars when you get back here. I'll go up
above to the upper station with these people. It's going to rain.
That will end the fire."

He saluted sharply in return, and turned again to those under his
personal charge.

"Get into the car," he said. Mary Gage felt his hand steadying her
arm. He took his place at the steering wheel, Wid Gardner alongside,
Annie and herself being left to the rear seat of the tonneau. It was
reckless driving that Doctor Allen Barnes did once more. They out-ran
the approaching valley storm, and so presently came into the gate of
that place where once had lived Sim Gage. They dismounted from the car
and stood, a forlorn group, looking at the scene before them as funeral
mourners returning, not liking the thought of going into a deserted
home from which a man is gone never to return.

CHAPTER XXXV

ANNIE ANSWERS

All at once Annie Squires, usually stolid, now overstrained, gave way
to a wild sobbing. "I can't go in there," said she. "I'm scared. I
want to go home! I want my mother, that's what I want."