His voice was husky and unnatural.
There was something heavy in the handkerchief, and a shudder passed through Aldous as he placed it on the palm of his hand and unveiled its contents. He could not repress an exclamation when he saw what MacDonald had brought. In his hand, with a single thickness of the wet handkerchief between the objects and his flesh, lay a watch and a ring. The watch was of gold. It was tarnished, but he could see there were initials, which he could not make out, engraved on the back of the case. The ring, too, was of gold. It was one of the most gruesome ornaments Aldous had ever seen. It was in the form of a coiled and writhing serpent, wide enough to cover half of one's middle finger between the joints. Again the eyes of the two men met, and again Aldous observed that strange, stunned look in the old hunter's face. He turned and walked back toward the tent, MacDonald following him slowly, still staring, his long gaunt arms and hands hanging limply at his side.
Joanne heard them, and came out of the tent. A choking cry fell from her lips when she saw MacDonald. For a moment one of her hands clutched at the wet canvas of the tent, and then she swayed forward, knowing what John Aldous had in his hand. He stood voiceless while she looked. In that tense half-minute when she stared at the objects he held it seemed to him that her heart-strings must snap under the strain. Then she drew back from them, her eyes filled with horror, her hands raised as if to shut out the sight of them, and a panting, sobbing cry broke from between her pallid lips.
"Oh, my God!" she breathed. "Take them away—take them away!"
She staggered back to the tent, and stood there with her hands covering her face. Aldous turned to the old hunter and gave him the things he held.
A moment later he stood alone where the three had been, staring now as Joanne had stared, his heart beating wildly.
For Joanne, in entering the tent, had uncovered her face; it was not grief that he saw there, but the soul of a woman new-born. And as his own soul responded in a wild rejoicing, MacDonald, going over the summit and down into the hollow, mumbled in his beard:
"God ha' mercy on me! I'm doin' it for her an' Johnny, an' because she's like my Jane!"