given herself to him as she had once
given herself to Mortimer FitzHugh. In the "coyote," when they had faced
death, she had told him that were there to be a to-morrow in life for them
she would have given herself to him utterly and without reservation. And
that to-morrow had dawned. It was present. She was his wife. And she had
come to him as she had promised. In her eyes he had seen love and trust and
faith--and a glorious happiness. She had made no effort to hide that
happiness from him. Consciousness of it filled him with his own great
happiness, and yet it made him realize even more deeply how hard his fight
was to be. She was his wife. In a hundred little ways she had shown him
that she was proud of her wifehood. And again he told himself that she had
come to him as she had promised, that she had given into his keeping all
that she had to give. And yet--_she was not his wife!_

He groaned aloud, and his fingers dug into the flesh of his knees as he
thought of that. Could he keep that terrible truth from her? If she went
with him into the North, would she not guess? And, even though he kept the
truth from her until Mortimer FitzHugh was dead, would he be playing fair
with her? Again he went over all that he had gone over before. He knew that
Joanne would leave him to-morrow, and probably forever, if he told her that
FitzHugh was alive. The law could not help him, for only death--and never
divorce--would free her. Within himself he decided for the last time. He
was about to do the one thing left for him to do. And it was the honourable
thing, for it meant freedom for her and happiness for them both. To him,
Donald MacDonald had become a man who lived very close to the heart and the
right of things, and Donald had said that he should take her. This was the
greatest proof that he was right.

But could he keep Joanne from guessing? Could he keep her from discovering
the truth until it was time for her to know that truth? In this necessity
of keeping her from suspecting that something was wrong he saw his greatest
fight. Compared with it, the final settlement with Quade and Mortimer
FitzHugh sank into a second importance. He knew what would happen then. But
Joanne--Joanne on the trail, as his wife----

He began pacing back and forth in his room, clouding himself in the smoke
of his pipe. Frequently Joanne's mind had filled him with an exquisite
delight by its quickness and at times almost magic perceptiveness, and he
r