e too late.
Three days later Jane died. And there is another picture in my brain--a
picture of young Donald sitting there in the cave, clasping in his arms the
cold form of the one creature in the world that he loved; moaning and
sobbing over her, calling upon her to come back to life, to open her eyes,
to speak to him--until at last his brain cracked and he went mad. That is
what happened. He went mad."

Joanne's breath was coming brokenly through her lips. Unconsciously she had
clasped her fingers about the hand Aldous rested on her pommel.

"How long he remained in the cave with his dead, MacDonald has never been
able to say," he resumed.

"He doesn't know whether he buried his wife or left her lying on the sand
floor of the cave. He doesn't know how he got out of the mountains. But he
did, and his mind came back. And since then, Joanne--for a matter of forty
years--his life has been spent in trying to find that cave. All those years
his search was unavailing. He could find no trace of the little hidden
valley in which the treasure-seekers found their bonanza of gold. No word
of it ever came out of the mountains; no other prospector ever stumbled
upon it. Year after year Donald went into the North; year after year he
came out as the winter set in, but he never gave up hope.

"Then he began spending winter as well as summer in that forgotten
world--forgotten because the early gold-rush was over, and the old
Telegraph trail was travelled more by wolves than men. And always, Donald
has told me, his beloved Jane's spirit was with him in his wanderings over
the mountains, her hand leading him, her voice whispering to him in the
loneliness of the long nights. Think of it, Joanne! Forty years of that!
Forty years of a strange, beautiful madness, forty years of undying love,
of faith, of seeking and never finding! And this spring old Donald came
almost to the end of his quest. He knows, now; he knows where that little
treasure valley is hidden in the mountains, he knows where to find the
cave!"

"He found her--he found her?" she cried. "After all those years--he found
her?"

"Almost," said Aldous softly. "But the great finale in the tragedy of
Donald MacDonald's life is yet to come, Ladygray. It will come when once
more he stands in the soft white sand of that cavern floor, and sometimes
I tremble when I think that when that moment comes I will be at his side.
To me it will be terrible. To him it will be--what? That ho