"It is his name," she said, and there was something repressed and terrible in her low voice. "It is his name!"
She was looking straight into the eyes of John Aldous, and he saw that she was fighting to say something which she had not spoken. Suddenly she came to him, and her two hands caught his arm.
"It is terrible—what I am going to ask of you," she struggled. "You will think I am a ghoul. But I must have proof! I must—I must!"
She was staring wildly at him, and all at once there leapt fiercely through him a dawning of the truth. The name was there, seared by hot iron in that slab of wood. The name! But under the cairn of stones——
Behind them MacDonald had heard. He towered beside them now. His great mountain-twisted hands drew Joanne a step back, and strange gentleness was in his voice as he said:
"You an' Johnny go back an' build a fire, Mis' Joanne. I'll find the proof!"
"Come," said Aldous, and he held out his hand again.
MacDonald hurried on ahead of them. When they reached the camp he was gone, so that Joanne did not see the pick and shovel which he carried back. She went into the tent and Aldous began building a fire where MacDonald's had been drowned out. There was little reason for a fire; but he built it, and for fifteen minutes added pitch-heavy fagots of storm-killed jack-pine and spruce to it, until the flames leapt a dozen feet into the air. Half a dozen times he was impelled to return to the grave and assist MacDonald in his gruesome task. But he knew that MacDonald had meant that he should stay with Joanne. If he returned, she might follow.
He was surprised at the quickness with which MacDonald performed his work. Not more than half an hour had passed when a low whistle drew his eyes to a clump of dwarf spruce back in the timber. The mountaineer was standing there, holding something in his hand. With a backward glance to see that Joanne had not come from the tent, Aldous hastened to him. What he could see of MacDonald's face was the lifeless colour of gray ash. His eyes stared as if he had suffered a strange and unexpected shock. He went to speak, but no words came through his beard. In his hand he held his faded red neck-handkerchief. He gave it to Aldous.
"It wasn't deep," he said. "It was shallow, turribly shallow, Johnny—just under the stone!"