rapped.

She met him with a smile that she knew would stagger his fond eyes.
She drugged his ear with a low-voiced greeting. "You are late,
dearest."

He looked at her and caught her hands. As his head bent she let her
lips lie in his kiss, and let his arm find her waist as he kissed her
deeply again. They walked together toward the fireplace, and when she
saw the sadness of his face fear in her heart gave way to pity. "What
is it?" she whispered. "Tell me."

"The car has come with Doubleday and McGraw, Gertrude. The wreck was
terribly fatal. Morris Blood must have jumped from the cab. The track
I have told you is blasted there out of the cheek of the mountain, and
it's impossible to tell what his fate may be: but if he is alive I must
find him. There is a good hope, I believe, for Morris; he is a man to
squeeze through on a narrow chance. And Gertrude--I couldn't tell you
if I didn't think you had a right to know everything I know. It breaks
my heart to speak of it--McGraw is dead."

"I am so glad you told me the truth," she trembled, "for I knew it----"

"Knew it?" She confessed, hastily, how her anxiety had led her to his
office, and of the terrible shock she had brought on herself. "But now
I know you would not deceive me," she added; "that is why I love you,
because you are always honest and true. And do you love me, as you
have told me, more than all the world?"

"More than all the world, Gertrude. Why do you look so? You are
trembling."

"Have you come to say good-by?"

"Only for a day or two, darling: till I can find Morris, then I come
straight back to you."

"You, too, may be killed?"

"No, no."

"But I heard the man telling you you would go to your death if you
attempted to cross that hill with a plough. Be honest with me; you are
risking your life."

"Only as I have risked it almost every day since I came into the
mountains."

"But now--now--doesn't it mean something else? Think what it means to
me--your life. Think what will become of me if you should be killed in
trying to open that hill--if you should fall over a precipice as Morris
Blood has fallen and lies now probably dead. Don't go. Don't go, this
time. You have promised me you would leave the mountains, haven't you?
Don't risk all, dearest, all I have on earth, in an attempt that may
utterly fail and add one more precious life to the lives now
sacrificed. You do heed me, darling, don't you?"

She had disenga