of rack-rock, which, none might know how
long, had been hid between the buttresses and back of the apron of the
dam.

Doctor Barnes reasoned now that that man in all likelihood had come
from below. If so, in all likelihood he was one of the Dorenwald
party. His face lighted grimly. There were but few places where they
could have found a place in the canyon for an encampment. If they had
found one of these places--where were they now? Their fate could now
be read in this flood forcing its way down through the crooked gorge of
the mountain range. The flag staff had not been swept down--the flag
still fluttered now, triumphant over the attempted ruin--the answer of
America to Anarchy! And the flag had been avenged. Dorenwald and his
"free brothers," leaders of the "world's revolt," would revolt no more.
The sponge of the slate had wiped off their little marks. No one would
ever trace them. They would find no confessional and no shriving, for
their way back to that underworld of devil-fed minds, out of which they
had emerged to do ruin in a country which had never harmed them, but
which on the contrary had welcomed them and fed them in their want.

CHAPTER XXXIV

AFTER THE DELUGE

In one elemental instant there was loosed in the soul of Mary Gage a
pent flood of emotion. She let her heart go, let in the wilderness of
primitive things again. She was alive! She could see! She could be
as other women!

The flood of relief, of joy, of yearning, was a thing cosmic, so strong
that regret and grief were for the time swept on and buried in the
welter of emotions running free.

It was as though she had stepped absolutely from one world into
another. Suddenly, the people of her old world were gone. There had
been a shadow, a strange, magnified shadow of a soul, this man who had
been called her husband. But now with astonishing swiftness and
clarity of vision she knew that he never had been a husband to her.
What another had told her was the truth. He never had allowed her to
touch his hand, his face, he never had laid a hand on hers, never had
called her by any name of love, never had kissed her or sought to do
so. And he was gone now, so absolutely that not even the image of him
could remain had she ever owned an image of him. She never had known
him, and now never could.

Alas! Sim Gage, shall we say? By no means. Happy Sim Gage! For he
passed at the climax of his life and took with him foreve