“Good Lord, deliver us!” again said Lawless. “Where did she get it?”
“From a book which Fingall left behind.”
They watched her till she rounded a cliff, and was gone; then they shouldered their kits and passed up the river on the trail of the wapiti.
One month later, when a fine white surf of frost lay on the ground, and the sky was darkened often by the flight of the wild geese southward, they came upon a hut perched on a bluff, at the edge of a clump of pines. It was morning, and Whitefaced Mountain shone clear and high, without a touch of cloud or mist from its haunches to its crown.
They knocked at the hut door, and, in answer to a voice, entered. The sunlight streamed in over a woman, lying upon a heap of dried flowers in a corner. A man was kneeling beside her. They came near, and saw that the woman was Cynthie.
“Fingall!” broke out Pierre, and caught the kneeling man by the shoulder. At the sound of his voice the woman’s eyes opened.
“Fingall!—Oh, Fingall!” she said, and reached up a hand.
Fingall stooped and caught her to his breast: “Cynthie! poor girl! Oh, my poor Cynthie!” he said. In his eyes, as in hers, was a sane light, and his voice, as hers, said indescribable things.
Her head sank upon his shoulder, her eyes closed; she slept. Fingall laid her down with a sob in his throat; then he sat up and clutched Pierre’s hand.
“In the East, where the doctors cured me, I heard all,” he said, pointing to her, “and I came to find her. I was just in time; I found her yesterday.”