It was at that moment that the Littlest Buck Wolfe's mother came to the door. She was round-figured, mature, magnificent; her face was that of a Madonna; her hair was of the color of dark copper. Her husband shot up straight. "_Tot!_" * * * * * After they had succeeded in convincing Granny Wolfe that she had been talking to her own grandson, Wolfe told the story of the tragedy, as he knew it, that had taken place at the lake that was the source of Doe River. "Mayfield deceived us both," said Tot. "Most of what he told you was true. But instead of going down in the lake, I took the stolen money and my rifle and came back here to prove your innocence of the charge of robbing the company's safe. Mayfield had been threatening to kill me if I didn't marry him and run away to Virginia with him. I escaped by some means, I never could remember just how, for I was really sick and delirious; I got back here only after days and days of wandering. How he must have hated you, to die as he did! But he was blind. "And the man in officer-blue was Lon, my brother!" she went on. "He had himself made a deputy-sheriff, and went to hunt Cat-Eye Mayfield. He didn't take any irons along; he meant to kill Mayfield. And that miserable little ant--what a tiny, tiny thing to keep us apart for so long! But life is like that." "Well, we won't be separated again," said Wolfe, "unless Whitney Fair has me prosecuted for helping my people get away." "Whitney Fair is dead, and his family don't live in Johnsville any more," Tot replied. "I'm sure nobody else will remember it against you." In which she was correct. News of Little Buck Wolfe's return spread rapidly. The people of Utopia hastened to welcome him; the Masons came up in a little passenger car carried by the daily ore train. It was a gala day, a Christmas, a July Fourth, and a Thanksgiving Day, all in one. [Illustration] When the pointed shadow of Picketts Dome was reaching for the crest of the Big Blackfern, Wolfe stole away with his wife to pay his respects, as it were, to the one soul that had not been there to greet him. Tot led the zigzag way up the bald peak, upon which the ironwood cross still stood. They gathered sheafs of waxen-white laurel bloom, and later they put these in reverence on a mound between the great cross and a great boulder, the last earthly resting place of Grandpap Singleton, who had been called the Prophet. "There, look," Tot said in the hushed voice of one who speaks in an atmosphere of holiness. She pointed. "The colonel had that done." High on the even face of the huge stone had been cut in bold letters; GRANDPAP WILLIAM SINGLETON He, too, had drained life's iron chalice bravely. Wolfe's eyes dimmed. And below the name, in the old hill dialect, had been chiseled in smaller letters this gem from the Prophet's crude philosophy, which well might ring down the centuries to come: