Her pale face blushed as it had that day in the woods on Owl Marsh, so
long, so long ago, when this man's lips first touched her hands.

As their eyes met both remembered. Then she smiled at her lover with
the shy girl's soul of her gazing out at him through eyes as blue as the
wild blind-gentians that grow among the ferns and mosses of Star Pond.

* * * * *

Far away in the northwestern forests Quintana still lashed his horses
through the primeval pines.

Triumphant, reckless, resourceful, dangerous, he felt that now nothing
could stop him, nothing bar his way to freedom.

Out of the wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must
win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence -- creep out, lie his
way out, shoot his way out -- it scarcely mattered. He was going out!
He was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop
him? Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that was worth
living for -- the keys to power, to pleasure, -- the key to everything
on earth!

In fierce exultation he slapped the glass jewels in his pocket and
laughed aloud.

"The keys to the world!" he cried. "Let him stop me and take them who
is better than I!" Then his long whip whistled and he cursed his
horses.

Then, of a sudden, close by in the snowy road ahead, he saw a State
Trooper on snow-shoes, -- saw the upflung arm warning him -- screamed
curses at his horses, flogged them forward to crush this thing to death
that dared menace him -- this object that suddenly rose up out of
nowhere to snatch from him the keys of the world----

* * * * *

For a moment the State Trooper looked after the runaway horses. There
was no use following; they'd have to run till they dropped.

Then he lowered the levelled rifle from his shoulder, looked grimly at
the limp thing which had tumbled from the sledge into the snowy road and
which sprawled there crimsoning the spotless flakes that fell upon it.

* * * * *

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaming Jewel, by Robert Chambers

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