"Yes, that--and the hurt in my head," he said, remembering the part he
must play. "They came at about the same time, and the two of them must
have put the grain of sand in my brain."
It was hard to lie now, looking straight into her face that had gone
suddenly white, and with her wonderful eyes burning deep into his soul.
She did not seem, for an instant, to hear his voice or sense his words.
"I understand now," she was saying, the letter crumpling in her
fingers. "I was sick for almost a year, Derry. They thought I was going
to die. He must have written it then, and they destroyed my letters to
you, and when I was better they told me you were dead, and then I
didn't write any more. And I wanted to die. And then, almost a year
ago, Colonel Reppington came to me, and his dear old voice was so
excited that it trembled, and he told me that he believed you were
alive. A friend of his had just returned from British Columbia, and
this friend told him that three years before, while on a grizzly
shooting trip, he had met a man named Conniston, an Englishman. We
wrote a hundred letters up there and found the man, Jack Otto, who was
in the mountains with you, and then I knew you were alive. But we
couldn't find you after that, and so I came--"
He would have wagered that she was going to cry, but she fought the
tears back, smiling.
"And--and I've found you!" she finished triumphantly.
She snuggled close to him, and he slipped an arm about her waist, and
they walked on. She told him about her arrival in Halifax, how Colonel
Reppington had given her letters to nice people in Montreal and
Winnipeg, and how it happened one day that she found his name in one of
the Mounted Police blue books, and after that came on as fast as she
could to surprise him at Prince Albert. When she came to that point,
Keith pointed once more into the west and said:
"And there is our new world. Let us forget the old. Shall we, Mary
Josephine?"
"Yes," she whispered, and her hand sought his again and crept into it,
warm and confident.