cing the fire, and twice he thought to speak to Ridgar with a question
of this strangeness, and each time he was conscious of a vast surprise
that the man did not answer.

His lips, so long unused to sane direction, had made no sound in the
roar of the night.

And then Ridgar, drawn by that intangible sense of eyes upon him, raised
his head; and, as their glances met, that great void flashed suddenly
into full panoply of life peopled with a ring of painted faces against
the background of a night forest, a leaping fire, and the heroic figure
of a tall woman who stood in the dancing light and threw a hatchet at a
painted post.

Ridgar's eyes, as he had seen them in the dimness of the outskirts of
that massed circle, brought back the lost period of time and all that
had passed therein.

He stared wildly at him, and then around the firelit room.

"Ah!" said Ridgar softly, getting slowly to his feet with a smile at
once tender and exaggeratedly calm. "You have awakened, have you; eh,
lad? Would you sleep the whole night away as well as the day?"

He came to the bed and took McElroy's hand tenderly in his, while he
gave Rette a warning glance.

McElroy tried to rise, but only his head obeyed, lifting itself a bit
from the pillow to fall helplessly back.

He looked up at Ridgar with a look that cut that good man's heart, so
full was it of wild entreaty and piteous grief.

"Maren?" whispered the weak lips. "Maren,--where--?" And they, too,
failed him.

"Safe," said Ridgar gently; "all is well. We are at De Seviere and there
is no need to think. Do you drink a sip of Rette's good broth and sleep
again."

With a sigh of ineffable relief the sick man obeyed like a child,
falling back into the shadows, though this time they were the blessed
shades of the Vale of Healing Rest.

Rette in a corner was wiping her eyes and saying, over and over, a
prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance from death.

With infinite tact Ridgar kept him quiet, promising the tale of what
had happened, and, when the flow of returning life could no longer be
stemmed, he set himself the task of telling what he knew of those swift
days.

It was again night, though a week of nights had passed since that on
which the factor had awakened to consciousness, and Ridgar had dismissed
Rette.

There was only the roar of the wind without, the whistle of the fire,
and the two men alone in the room as they had been many a winter's
night.

"Now,--where