lf. And gradually they
centered upon himself alone; and he stood presently, as it were, naked
before God, with something like a prayer unspoken, a silent,
voiceless petition rising from his tortured soul.

He became calm after that. A curious peace, it seemed, had flowed in
upon him. Mechanically he renewed the fire, brought water and held it
to Marion's lips, and eased her position on the bed. Then he sat by
her side to wait!

Well, this was the end. She would be going soon,--to-morrow, or the
day after. He glanced toward the shelf where Marion's rifle and his
revolver lay. She would not be there now to snatch the weapon from his
hand! But she would be waiting for him. And there came back to him the
strange feeling he had experienced in his cottage--the pressure of her
hand still warm on his own--her hand helping up and up and out of the
Valley of the Shadow. And her hand would be stretched out for him--in
the Beyond--

* * * * *

It must have been about the middle of the next forenoon--he had ceased
to reckon time, and there were no more notches cut on the black wall
of the cave--when Philip, sitting at Marion's side, observed a
curious, restless movement of her head. She had lain all morning in a
stupor, very still, with only an occasional murmur from her dry lips.
But now, moving her head from side to side, she tried to lift it, as
if to listen.

"What is it, Marion?" asked Haig, leaning close to her.

"Listen!" she whispered.

He obeyed her, or pretended to, and turned an ear toward the mouth of
the cavern. The wind was up with its wailing and its snarls and
shrieks. He heard it for a moment, then looked at her again.

"My poor girl! My poor Marion!" he said.

"Listen!" she repeated, with a touching emphasis, almost childish,
almost petulant.

He heard the storm.

"Yes, Marion," he said, humoring her.

"Can't you hear it?" she pleaded. "Listen!"

It was the delirium again; she was hearing things that were not,
except in her disordered mind. Perhaps--he had read somewhere that the
dying, those of them that are pure at heart, sometimes hear the
calling of the--

"Somebody's--coming!" she cried in the thinnest, most childlike
treble. Her face shone; she tried to sit up; she raised one hand
feebly toward him.

"Please lie down, dear!" pleaded Haig, pressing her gently back.

She resisted him, smiling and frowning at the same time.

"Be--very--still. And-