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Show ruent of her shoulders that she was weeping. "There are some things without price," he said gently. "Wnat I have doce, I have not done for reward. I know that I have your gTatitude it Is enough." She turned gwLftly upon him with: "But If you knew "; seemingly confused, con-fused, checked by a surge of emotion she could not control, she stood for an Instant, lnartlculute; then left him alone. I. ate In February, long after the last of the fur Cached at the Stooping had been traded with St. Onge, a dog-team driven by a strange Indian arrived at Wailing Kiver. To the surprised questions ques-tions of the factor the driver answered that lie had come from Nepigon station sta-tion with a package and a letter addressed ad-dressed to Mademoiselle Denise St. Onge. The factor took the long, wooden wood-en box and the letter to his quarters, where he found bis daughter with Charlotte In the kitchen. "A packet has arrived from Nepigon," Nep-igon," announced the excited St. Onge, "with a box and a letter for you, my child." "A letter for me?" she said, a wave of color swooping her face, while St. Onge watched her curiously. In the living room Denlse St. Onge opened the letter, postmarked Kenora, and read: "Mademoiselle St. Onge: "Walling River. "What I wrote you at Ogoke last autumn was a lie. I am sorry. "Rose Bernard, formerly Laflamme." The paper slowly slipped from the fingers of the numbed girl and fluttered flut-tered to the door. "What Is It? Who is It from?" demanded de-manded her father. The face of Denise St. Onge was the color of chalk as she raised her hopeless hope-less eyes. "He went to Albany for P8 "V:. Jvv Iff Ml made the Long evenings again blight with music. But of Denise he said little, except that she was well and played Incessantly. So much had happened hap-pened that the winter seemed unusually unusual-ly long was, in fact, a bit on their nerves, and the spring would be most welcome. Some day, St. Onge suggested, suggest-ed, It might be possible for Steele to revisit the valley of the Walling. He knew the way and his friends there would live for that day. The other letter was shorter. It ran: "Dear Monsieur Steele : "A violin and a Nicolo Amatl! Your generosity and your thought of me make these words but feetle things. You, to whom gratitude Is distasteful, dis-tasteful, must yet endure my heartfelt thanks, not only for the rare gift, but for the journey you made for my peace of mind through that terrible wind and cold. The violin will ever be a living memory of one who came, a stranger, to two lonely and hopeless creatures, and left them, facing the future with courage. "Denise St. Onge." If only the letter had given him a sign that she wanted him needed him, instead of dwelling on her gratitude. grati-tude. She was so proud and so brave. If only he had taken her in his arms that last night, and learned from her eyes, the blood in her face, the beat of her heart, whether she was paying a debt of honor or loved him. Then, late in May, came R letter addressed by a hand unused to the pen, and postmarked at Nepigon station sta-tion on the Canadian Pacific. David doubtless had news and some one had written for him. Steele opened the envelope and read with Increasing wonder and delight: "Miseu Steele - "Iv you weesh mamsel you burn up de trail to Wailing Reever queek. All de long snow she have play an play de sad museec an cry on her bed. Wen we go on hill first tarn she lift her arm to de sout an say, Cum bak to me. Dat mean you. You cum lak de win. Michel tak dis to de railroad, he an me get marry wen meesnary cum in june. Charlotte." It was from the faithful Ojibway woman who had for so long faithfully served Denise. That night the Montreal sleeper out of New York carried a man whose gray eyes were strangely happy: A week later two friends were poling the nose of a canoe into the spring freshet of the Jackfish as if pursued by a Windigo. Farther on they recklessly reck-lessly ran in succession each white-water white-water of the swollen Rouge. Down Ogoke, the measured churn-swlsh, churn-swish of lunging blades marked off the miles to the outlet. Then riding rid-ing the flood water of the racing Wailing, Wail-ing, one afternoon the canoe slid into the beach of the post. In the trade-house Steele and David found St. Onge and his head-man. There were surprised greetings, then: "I have come for her," announced the American. "Where is she?" "She has gone to the ridge," answered an-swered St. Onge with shining eyes. "You will find her with her violin alone." At the edge of the scrub, below the bare brow of the hill, Steele stopped, with a heart which jarred him with its beat. He wanted to watch her listen to her playing before making his coming known. With a shaking hand he parted the spruce and looked. v Silhouetted against the soft May sky, she stood with her violin, facing from him Presently she tilted her bead and drew the . bow across the strings. Faintly drifted clown to him the haunting minors of the "Elegie" he first heard at the rapids the symbol sym-bol of her fears and despair. Then, of a sudden, the far call of errant Canadas troke iu on the strains of the violin. The girl stopped short off and searched the sky for the wedge I of geese. Out of the south she saw I them coming and opened her arms. Then, as the violin changed its mood broke into her own, "When Spring Comes North," he noiselessly approached ap-proached her. She finished, and as the last of the flock passed overhead, waved her bow. "Goodby ! goodby !" she called, a3 the wanderers faded into the north. "I have followed them back to you," spoke a low voice behind her. The girl turned startled eyes on the man who stood smiling. Over her throat and face up to the dusky hair mounted the blood. "You!" she faltered. "It's not a drejim?" "I have come back," he said, "for your gratitude." "My gratitude?" She smiled through mist-veiled eyes, as he stood beside her. "You ask no more?" And she was in his arms, his face buried in the raven hair. "Denise! Denise!" She raised her flaming face to his, and there on the hilltop they stood, oblivious of the world. "Do you think this gratitude?" she murmured at length. "No paradise !" "At last my spring has come north," she sighed, "after the long snows." THE END The Valley ofVoices By GEORGE MARSJI ' Author of "Toilers of the Trail" "The Whelps of the Wolf" Cu;yril(ht hy the t'nn Pu bl iHUr.g Co.) (W. N. U. .Service. CHAPTER XX 27 One liitUT day In the middle of January Jan-uary six lean dogs, heads down, limped painfully across the clearing at Walling Wall-ing Klvor. At the tail of the sled followed fol-lowed two men, whose haggard eyes and frost-cracked faces bore the scars of the barrage of the January blizzards. bliz-zards. "We have worried much, Michel and I," said the factor, ns Steele and David thawed out before the trade-house stove. "You struck terrible weather. Did your rntlons hold out?" "Yes, by culting them In two," replied re-plied Steele with n grimace. "We'll give you your fill as soon as It can be cooked. And your mission It was successful ?" hazarded the curious curi-ous St. Onge, ignorant of the purpose of the six-hundred-mile midwinter Journey. "It was," and Sleele handed the factor fac-tor the oil-skin envelope. "Read that!" St. Onge read the release In open-mouthed open-mouthed amazement. "Man, r.mn ! How did you get It?" he gasped. Sleele described his mooting at Albany Al-bany with Liiscelles. Unchecked tears slowly gathered in the eyes of the overjoyed old man. "My boy," he said brokenly. "It would be the proudest day of my life. You still care for her, don't you?" he demanded de-manded anxiously. "You know I care for her," Steele gently answered, "but I went to Albany Al-bany for her not for myself. . You must promise me that she hears nothing noth-ing of this until I have left. She would think she had to pay feel honor hon-or bound. I know her, monsieur. You must not tell her." "But If she cares? I feel, In her heart, that she does," protested St. Onge. "She must be a free agent," Insisted Insist-ed Steele. "I go south as soon as the dogs are rested. I shall talk to her first." "I'm sorry, but as you wish It, I shall not tell her." That night, after what, to the hungry hun-gry Steele, was a sumptuous meal, consisting largely of caribou, St. Onge left his guest and daughter alone. During the meal the girl hud furtively fur-tively noted the frostbitten fingers of the American, the drawn cheeks, black-ened black-ened and cracked by the wind of the Albany trail, the strained look in the gray eyes. Steele had warmed to the sincerity of her welcome, the evident pleasure In her greeting. Exhausted s he was, the days before bis departure depar-ture were too few to waste one evening eve-ning by seeking rest, so he watched her with hungry eyes as they talked, wondering whether her heart had changed. But she gave no sign, and he was too proud to ask. On the evening before he left with David for Nepigon, he again sat alone with the woman for whose welfare he hail given the best that was in him for whom he had toiled aud planned, faced the sting of the norther and the pinch of the searing cold; the woman he loved too deeply to make himself the recipient of her gratitude. "You have never told me, monsieur, why you took that terrible journey to Albany," she said, after a silence in which her black brows were drawn together to-gether in evident abstraction. The man's eyes softened as they lingered on the clean lines of her profile, pro-file, the masses of her dusky hair, for she bad asked the question with averted avert-ed face as If fearing his answer. "I went to Albany," he said, "to test my judgment of human nature." "And you found ?" "I found that I was a mind reader," he answered with a smile. "Is It a very great secret?" she asked with a wistful look in the dark eyes that searched his. "No, you will hear tomorrow." "But. tomorrow you go?" "Yes." "And I am not to know until you have gone? So that is it?" "You will understand tomorrow," he put her off with. For a long interval she sat gazing at the rug at her feet, then leaned toward to-ward him, her face tense with feeling. "Y.'hut must you think of me?" she demanded. "You have planned and worked for us, my father and me He Had Come From Nepigon Station With a Package and a Letter Addressed Ad-dressed to Mademoiselle Denise St. Onge. me," she said, as if to herself, "and would not tell me I was free, fearing my gratitude. And now I receive this." "But what is it?" "Read for yourself, father," and the stunned girl walked to a window, and gazed with dry-eyed emorse out on the white valley. "All, I deserve iO,J she said, turning turn-ing from the window. "But you are wrong when you think I did not know why he went to Albany I Vnew. And I knew I was free the nisih-. before he left, when when I tried ell him that I loved him. But he thought it was gratitude thought I was trying to pay. lie is proud oh, so proud!" "lie is a gallant gentleman, and did not know you cared," murmured the old num. "But what is in this box?" While the girl at the window gazed on the desolate bills as on the white ruin of her happiness, the factor opened the cover of the box. Removing Remov-ing the heavy wrappings of paper protecting pro-tecting the contents, he gasped in surprise. sur-prise. "Mon Dieu, mon Dieu !" The girl turned from her bitter retrospection. re-trospection. "What is it?" "Come here !" She joined him and bent over the box. In its wrappings lay the ebony case of a violin. On the lid of the case letters of gold spelled: "Nicolo Amatl, Cremona." "An Amati !" she cried in her joy. "A priceless Amati !" Then, brokenly, "Father, father! I am paying I am paying !" With feverish haste the key was found and the case opened. She tenderly ten-derly lifted the rare handiwork of the world-famour maker from its bed of velvet and impulsively caressed it with her cheek. "And he sends no word no letter?" cried the perplexed St. Onge. She smiled at bis naivete. "There . is no word to send, father. He i ; sorry there, in his gay New York, for the tnnelv woman he once knew in the wilderness. This." and she held aloft the violin, "is his anodyne for the desolate the symLol of his pity." It was May, and Brent Steele had been hard at work at the museum for three months. In March he had received re-ceived two letters brought from Wailing Wail-ing River by the messenger sent with the violin. The letter from the factor fac-tor was strained and self-conscious. Together with brief mention of the arrival ar-rival of the fur from the Stooping, St. Onge had profusely th. inked his friend for the costly gift which had given given given! And we we have sat with folded bands while you toi'.cd and won. Oh, I want you to know how line you have been through it till want you to sense my gratitude before you go." She had risen and was pacing the floor restraint gone. "I have been selfish inhospitable," she stumbled on, her eyes avoiding his. "but I want you to know that there ;s nothing nothing which I will not do to prove my gratitude for what you have done." She turned from lum tad he knew hy the convulsive move- |