The Valley of the Silent Men

There came an interruption, the opening of a door. Anne McTrigger stood looking at them where a little time before she had disappeared with Marette. There was a glad smile in her face. Her dark eyes were glowing with a new happiness. First they rested on McTrigger's face, and then on Kent's.

"Marette is much better," she said in her soft voice. "She is waiting to see you, M'sieu Kent. Will you come now?"

Like one in a dream Kent went toward her. He picked up his pack, for with its precious contents it had become to him like his own flesh and blood. And as the woman led the way and Kent followed her, McTrigger did not move from the fireplace. In a little while Anne McTrigger came back into the room. Her beautiful eyes were aglow. She was smiling softly, and putting her arms about the shoulders of the man at the fireplace, she whispered: "I have looked at the night through the window, Malcolm. I think that the stars are bigger and brighter than they have been in a long time. And the Watcher seems like a living god up in the sky. Come, please."

She took his hand, and Malcolm went with her. Over their heads burned a glory of stars. The wind came gently up the valley, cool with the freshness of the mountain-tops, sweet with the smell of meadow and flowers. And when the woman pointed through the glow, Malcolm McTrigger looked up at the Watcher, and for an instant he fancied that he saw what she had seen--something that was life instead of death, a glow of understanding and of triumph in the mighty face of stone above the lace mists of the clouds. For a long time they walked on, and deep in the heart of the woman a voice cried out again and again that the Watcher knew, and that it was a living joy she saw up there, for up to that unmoving and voiceless god of the mountains she had cried and laughed and sung--and even prayed; and with her Marette had also done these things, until at last the pulse and beat of women's souls had given a spirit to a form of rock.

Back in the chateau which Malcolm McTrigger and his brother Donald had built of logs, in a room whose windows faced the Watcher himself, Marette was unveiling the last of mystery for Jim Kent. And this, too, was her hour of triumph. Her lips were red and warm with the flush brought there by Kent's love.

Her face was like the wild roses he had crushed under his feet all that day. For in this hour the world had come to her, and had prostrated itself at her feet. The sacred contents of the pack were in her lap as she leaned back in the great blanketed and pillowed chair that had been her invalid's nest for many days. But it was an invalid's nest no longer. The floods of life were pounding through her body again, and in that hour when Malcolm McTrigger and his wife were gone, Kent looked upon the miracle of its change. And now Marette gave to him a little packet, and while Kent opened it she raised both hands to her head and unbound her hair so that it fell about her in shining and glorious confusion.