ole and full of power again. And here we have all that is
left of Gus Ingle and his friends--except for a pile of bones back
yonder!"

She saw that in each hand he carried what looked like a big rough stone;
she saw from the way he carried them that they were heavy. The fires
leaped higher, brighter in her eyes. Now she saw the way to make Mark
King pay for all of his brutality to her; to pay to the uttermost!

"I have nothing to say to you," she said as stiffly as she knew the way.
"I care to hear nothing you have to say. I have tolerated all that I
mean to tolerate from you."

Her bearing, no less than her words, astonished him. For the first time
he saw what it was that she held in her hands. She had been gathering up
her own little personal effects; a tiny parcel of silken things, comb
and brush, trifling feminine odds and ends. He stared at her
wonderingly.

"I don't understand----"

Gloria treated him to cool laughter.

"You will in a minute. I am going."

"Going? You? In God's name, _where_?"

Deep silence answered him. He frowned at her in puzzled fashion a
moment; then, suspecting the truth, since his racing mind could hit on
no other possible explanation of her manner, he dropped to the fireside
the things in his hands and went swiftly to the cave's mouth. He looked
out into the storm, his eyes questing in all directions. Nothing. Only
the thickening storm, the ridges dim beyond the swirl of snow----

Then he saw. For a long time he stood, studying it, seeking to make
sure. What he saw was beaten down by the falling snow, dissipated by the
wind, gone entirely over and again only to rise like a shapeless ghost
of disaster. It was a column of smoke. Some one had encamped no great
distance away; on the same stream, hidden only by the windings of the
gorge. Some one? Why, then, Gratton and Brodie and their crowd, after
all! He glowered angrily toward the faint smudge of smoke. Then he swung
about and came back to Gloria's side.

"You saw that smoke?" he demanded. "You plan on going to them?"

"Yes," cried Gloria. She sprang up and confronted him angrily. "Yes to
both questions."

"You know who they are, then?"

"No; but that doesn't matter."

"Which means as plain as print," he said thoughtfully, "that you would
go to any man to be rid of me." He laughed unpleasantly and Gloria's
anger flared the higher.

"Do you know," he said presently, "that they are probably Gratton and
Swen Brodie and thei