himself here with the company of his only daughter. Proficient as
a pathfinder, he had easily discovered some other way of
provisioning his house from the settlements than by the ordinary
trails past Collinson's or Skinner's, which would have betrayed his
vicinity. But recluses are not usually accompanied by young
daughters, whose relations with the world, not being as
antagonistic, would make them uncertain companions. Why not a
wife? His presumption of the extreme youth of the face he had seen
at the window was after all only based upon the slipper he had
found. And if a wife, whose absolute acceptance of such confined
seclusion might be equally uncertain, why not somebody else's wife?
Here was a reason for concealment, and the end of an episode, not
unknown even in the wilderness. And here was the work of the
Nemesis who had overtaken them in their guilty contentment! The
story, even to its moral, was complete. And yet it did not
entirely satisfy him, so superior is the absolutely unknown to the
most elaborate theory.

His attention had been once or twice drawn towards the crumbling
wall of outcrop, which during the conflagration must have felt the
full force of the fiery blast that had swept through the hollow and
spent its fury upon it. It bore evidence of the intense heat in
cracked fissures and the crumbling debris that lay at its feet.
Key picked up some of the still warm fragments, and was not
surprised that they easily broke in a gritty, grayish powder in his
hands. In spite of his preoccupation with the human interest, the
instinct of the prospector was still strong upon him, and he almost
mechanically put some of the pieces in his pockets. Then after
another careful survey of the locality for any further record of
its vanished tenants, he returned to his horse. Here he took from