u, say
anything of this to Barker."

"Why?" said Demorest.

"Well," returned Jack, "when our scrimmage was over down there, and they
brought the news to Barker that his wife and her diamonds were burnt up
at the hotel, you remember that they said that Mrs. Horncastle had saved
his boy."

"Yes," said Demorest; "but what has that to do with it?"

"Nothing, I reckon," said Jack, with a slight shrug of his shoulders,
"only Mrs. Horncastle was the mother of the boy that's lying there."

*****

Two years later as Demorest and Stacy sat before the fire in the old
cabin on Marshall's claim--now legally their own--they looked from the
door beyond the great bulk of Black Spur to the pallid snow-line of the
Sierras, still as remote and unchanged to them as when they had
gazed upon it from Heavy Tree Hill. And, for the matter of that, they
themselves seemed to have been left so unchanged that even now, as
in the old days, it was Barker's voice as he greeted them from the
darkening trail that alone broke their reverie.

"Well," said Demorest cheerfully, "your usual luck, Barker boy!" for
they already saw in his face the happy light they had once seen there on
an eventful night seven years ago.

"I'm to be married to Mrs. Horncastle next month," he said breathlessly,
"and little Sta loves her already as if she was his own mother. Wish me
joy."

A slight shadow passed over Stacy's face; but his hand was the first to
grasp Barker's, and his voice the first to say "Amen!"

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