gh, laced boots were made for the wilderness. She was not a
tenderfoot. She was a little sourdough--clear through! Gladness leaped
into Kent's face. But it was not the transformation of her dress alone
that amazed him. She was changed in another way. Her cheeks were
flushed. Her eyes glowed with a strange and wonderful radiance as she
looked at him. Her lips were red, as he had seen them that first time
at Cardigan's place. Her pallor, her fear, her horror were gone, and in
their place was the repressed excitement of one about to enter upon a
strange adventure.

On the floor was a pack only half as large as Kent's and when he picked
it up, he found it of almost no weight. He fastened it to his own pack
while Marette put on her raincoat and went down the stair ahead of him.
In the hall below she was waiting, when he came down, with Kedsty's big
rubber slicker in her hands.

"You must put it on," she said.

She shuddered slightly as she held the garment. The color was almost
gone from her cheeks, as she faced the door beyond which the dead man
sat in his chair, but the marvelous glow was still in her eyes as she
helped Kent with his pack and the slicker and afterward stood for an
instant with her hands touching his breast and her lips as if about to
speak something which she held back.

A few steps beyond them they heard the storm. It seemed to rush upon
the bungalow in a new fury, beating at the door, crashing over their
heads in thunder, daring them to come out. Kent reached up and turned
out the hall light.

In darkness he opened the door. Rain and wind swept in. With his free
hand he groped out, found Marette, drew her after him, and closed the
door again. Entering from the lighted hall into the storm was like
being swallowed in a pit of blackness. It engulfed and smothered them.
Then came suddenly a flash of lightning, and he saw Marette's face,
white and drenched, but looking at him with that same strange glow in
her eyes. It thrilled him. Even in the darkness it was there. It had
been there since he had returned to her from Kedsty and had knelt at
her bedside, with his arms about her for a moment.

Only now, in the beat of the storm, did an answer to the miracle of it
come to him. It was because of HIM. It was because of his FAITH in her.
Even death and horror could not keep it from her eyes. He wanted to cry
out the joy of his discovery, to give wild voice to it in the teeth of
the wind and the rain. He fel