A friend of his had just returned from British Columbia, and
this friend told him that three years before, while on a grizzly
shooting trip, he had met a man named Conniston, an Englishman. We
wrote a hundred letters up there and found the man, Jack Otto, who was
in the mountains with you, and then I knew you were alive. But we
couldn't find you after that, and so I came--"
He would have wagered that she was going to cry, but she fought the
tears back, smiling.
"And--and I've found you!" she finished triumphantly.
She snuggled close to him, and he slipped an arm about her waist, and
they walked on. She told him about her arrival in Halifax, how Colonel
Reppington had given her letters to nice people in Montreal and
Winnipeg, and how it happened one day that she found his name in one of
the Mounted Police blue books, and after that came on as fast as she
could to surprise him at Prince Albert. When she came to that point,
Keith pointed once more into the west and said:
"And there is our new world. Let us forget the old. Shall we, Mary
Josephine?"
"Yes," she whispered, and her hand sought his again and crept into it,
warm and confident.
XV
They went on through the golden morning, the earth damp under their
feet, the air filled with its sweet incense, on past scattered clumps
of balsams and cedars until they came to the river and looked down on
its yellow sand-bars glistening in the sun.
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