it had time to wake resentment.

"We must be off," Barry went on. "Come on, the first part of our way
lies together and we'd better hurry or some searching party will find
us. Remember, you've only been here an hour," he called back to Maria
Angelina. He did not look at her, but added, in that same offhand way,
"Better go in and get some sleep and I'll telephone the Lodge from
Peter's and have a motor and a horse sent after you."

"I'll come with the motor all right," Johnny promised.

"Don't worry," called back Barry, and waved his hand with an air of
gayety but there was no laughter on his face as he started off over the
hill with Johnny Byrd.

CHAPTER XII

JOURNEY'S END

Over the hills went Johnny Byrd and down the trail and into a grove of
pines.

Up to the left went Barry Elder, out of sight among the larches. He
walked briskly at first, his face clouded but set. Then he walked
slower, his face still clouded but unsettled.

Decidedly his pace lagged. Then it stopped. He looked back. . . . He
went a little way back and stopped again. . . . Then he went on going
back without stopping.

His face was much clearer now.

Maria Angelina had climbed a mountain and descended a mountain; she had
wandered and struggled and scrambled for hours till she was faint with
exhaustion; she had been through the extremes of hope and despair and
shame and anger and heart-breaking indignation till it seemed as if her
spirit must break with her body.

For recovery she had had some scant hours of sleep and a portion of
food.

And now, instead of succumbing to the mortal weariness that should have
been upon her, instead of closing the big eyes that burned in her head,
she stood at the cabin door with uplifted face listening to the song of
a bird that she did not know.

Then she reentered the cabin; but not to sink into a chair, not to
release her bruised feet from the weight of her tiredness.

She cleared the table and piled the dishes in a huge pan upon the little
stove. Upon the stove she discovered water heated in a kettle and she
poured it, splashing, over the panful. She found three cloths of
incredible blackness drying upon a little string in a corner by the
stove, and after smiling very tenderly upon them she abandoned them in
favor of a clean hand towel.

She restored the washed dishes to their obvious places upon the shelves
and with a broom she battled with the dust upon the floor and drove it
out th