There was no one in the room in which he found himself, but there was a stove and a fire. At the end of the room was a second door, and it opened slowly. In another moment Isobel stood there. He had never seen her as he saw her now, with the light from a window falling upon her. She was dressed in a loose gown, and her long hair fell in disheveled profusion over her shoulders and bosom. MacVeigh would have cried out her name-- he had told himself a hundred times what he would first say to her-- but what he saw in her face startled him and held him silent while their eyes met. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips burned an unnatural red. Her eyes were glowing with strange fires. She looked at him first, and her hands clutched at her bosom, crumpling the masses of her lustrous hair. Not until she had looked into his eyes did she recognize what he carried in his arms. When he held the child out to her she sprang forward with the strangest cry he had ever heard. "My baby!" she almost shrieked. "My baby-- my baby--" She staggered back and sank into a chair near a table, with little Isobel clasped to her breast. For a time Billy heard only those words in her dry, sobbing voice as she crushed her burning face down against her child's. He knew that she was sick, that it was fever which had sent the hot flush into her cheeks. He gulped hard, and went near to her. Trembling, he put out a hand and touched her. She looked up. A bit of that old, glorious light leaped into her eyes, the light which he had seen when in gratitude she had given him her lips to kiss. "You?" she whispered. "You-- brought her--" She caught his hand, and the soft smother of her loose hair fell over it. He could feel the quick rise and fall of her bosom. "Yes," he said. There was a demand in her face, her eyes, her parted lips. He went on, her hand clasping his tighter, until he could feel the swift beating of her heart. He had never thought that he could tell the story in as few words as he told it now, with more and more of the glorious light creeping into Isobel's eyes. She stopped breathing when he told her of the fight in the cabin and the death of the man who had stolen little Isobel. A hundred words more brought him to the edge of the forest. He stopped there. But she still questioned him in silence. She drew him down nearer, until he could feel her breath. There was something terrible in the demand of her eyes. He tried to find words to say, but something rose up in his throat and choked him. She saw his effort. "Go on," she said, softly. "And then-- I brought her to you," he said. "You met him?" Her question was so sudden that it startled him, and in an instant he had betrayed himself. Little Isobel slipped to the floor, and Isobel stood up. She came near to him, as she came that marvelous night out on the Barren, and in her eyes there was the same prayer as she put her two hands up to him and looked straight into his face.