God for the wonderful happiness that had come to him. For the
sweetness of the woman's lips and the greater sweetness of her blue
eyes told him what life held for him now. A day's journey to the south
was an Indian camp. He would take her there, and would hire runners to
carry up Pelliter's medicines and his letters. Then he would go on--
with the woman-- and he laughed softly and joyously at the glorious
news which he would take back to Pelliter a little later. For the kiss
burned on his lips, the blue eyes smiled at him still from out of the
firelit gloom, and he knew nothing but hope.

It was late, almost midnight, when he went to bed. With the storm
wailing and twisting more fiercely about him, he fell asleep. And it
was late when he awoke. The forest was filled with a moaning sound.
The fire was low. Beyond it the flap of the woman's tent was still
down, and he put on fresh fuel quietly, so that he would not awaken
her. He looked at his watch and found that he had been sleeping for
nearly seven hours. Then he returned to his tent to get the things for
breakfast. Half a dozen paces from the door flap he stopped in sudden
astonishment.

Hanging to his tent in the form of a great wreath was the red bakneesh
which he had cut the night before, and over it, scrawled in charcoal
on the silk, there stared at him the crudely written words:

"In honor of the living."

With a low cry he sprang back toward the other tent, and then, as
sudden as his movement, there flashed upon him the significance of the
bakneesh wreath. The woman was saying to him what she had not spoken
in words. She had come out in the night while he was asleep and had