The echoes are no longer silent in Tamahnous Peak. The witchcraft of silver has killed the old superstition. The "something" in Genesee's pocket had been a specimen that warranted investigation. The lost tribe had left enough ore there through the darkness of generations to make mining a thing profitable. Above those terraces of unknown origin there is a dwelling-house now, built of that same bewitched stone in which the echoes sleep; and often there is gathered under its roof a strange household.

The words of Genesee, "Be good to my Kootenais!" have so far been remembered by the girl who during the last year of his life filled his thoughts so greatly. His friends are her friends, and medley as the lot would appear to others, they are welcome to her. They have helped her solve the problem of what use she could make of her life. Her relatives have given up in despair trying to alter her unheard-of manner of living. The idea is prevalent among them that Rachel's mind, on some subjects, is really queer—she was always so erratic! They speak to her of the loneliness of those heights, and she laughs at them. She is never lonely. She had his word that he would not go far. With her lives old Davy MacDougall, who helps her much in the mining matters, and Kalitan is never far off. He is her shadow now, as he once was Genesee's. Indian women do the work of her home. A school is there for any who care to learn, and in the lodges of the Kootenais she is never forgotten.

It seemed strange that he who had so few friends in his life should win her so many by his death. The Indians speak of him now with a sort of awe, as their white brother whose counsels were so wise, whose courage was so great; he who forced from the spirits the secret of the lost mine. He has drifted into tradition as some wonderful creature who was among them for a while, disappearing at times, but always coming back at a time of their need.

To Rachel they turn as to something which they must guard—for he said so. She is to them always "Rashell of Lamonti"—of the mountains.

From the East and South come friends sometimes—letters and faces of people who knew him; Miss Fred, and her husband, and the Major, who is a stanch friend and admirer of the eccentric girl who was once a rebel in his camp; and in reminiscences the roughness of his Kootenai chief of scouts is swathed in the gray veil of the past—only the lightning-flashes of courage are photographed in the veteran's memory.

The Stuart and his wife and boy come there sometimes in the summer; and the girl and little Jack, who are very fond of each other, ride over the places where the other Jack Stuart rode—nameless for so long.

As for Prince Charlie, his natural affection for children amounts to adoration of the boy. Rachel wonders sometimes if the ideal his remorse had fostered for so long was filled at last by the girl whom he had left a delicately tinted apple-blossom and found a delicate type of the invalid, whose ill-health never exceeds fashionable indisposition. If not, no word or sign from him shows it. The pretty, ideal phases of domestic love and life that he used to write of, are not so ready to his pen as they once were through his dreams and remorse. Much changed for him are those northern hills, but they still have a fascination for him and he writes of them a good deal.

"It is the witchcraft of the place, or else it is you, Rachel," he said, once. "Both help me. When life grows old and stale in civilization, I come up here and straightway am young again. I can understand now how you helped Jack."

His wife—a pretty little woman with a gently appealing air—never really understands Rachel, though she and Tillie are great friends; but, despite Tillie's praise, Annie never can discover what there is in the girl for "Charlie and all the other men to like so much—and even poor, dear Jack, who must have been in love with her to leave her a silver mine." To Annie she seems rather clever, but with so little affection! and not even sympathetic, as most girls are. She heard of Rachel's pluck and bravery; but that is so near to boldness!—as heroes are to adventurers; and Annie is a very prim little woman herself. She quotes "my husband" a good deal, and rates his work with the first writers of the age.

The work has grown earnest; the lessons of Rachel's prophecy have crept into it. He has in so many ways justified them—achieved more than he hoped; but he never will write anything more fascinating than the changeless youth in his own eyes, or the serious tenderness of his own mouth when he smiles.

"Prince Charlie is a rare, fine lad," old Davy remarked at the end of an autumn, as he and Rachel watched their visitors out of sight down the valley; "a man fine enough to be brother to Genesee, an' I ne'er was wearied o' him till I hearkened to that timorous fine lady o' his lilting him into the chorus o' every song she sung. By her tellin' she's the first o' the wives that's ever had a husband."

"But she is not a fine lady at all," contradicted Rachel; "and she's a very affectionate, very good little woman. You are set against her because of that story of long ago—and that is hardly fair, Davy MacDougall."

"Well, then, I am not, lass. It's little call I have to judge children, but I own I'm ower cranky when I think o' the waste o' a man's life for a bit pigeon like that—an' a man like my lad was! The prize was no' worth the candle that give light to it. A man's life is a big thing to throw away, lass, an' I see nothing in that bit o' daintiness to warrant it. To me it's a woeful waste."

The girl walked on beside him through the fresh, sweet air of the morning that was filled with crisp kisses—the kisses that warn the wild things of the Frost-King's coming. She was separated so slightly from the wild things herself that she was growing to understand them in a new spirit—through a sympathy touched less by curiosity than of old. She thought of that man, who slept across on Scot's Mountian, in sight of Tamahnous Peak; how he had understood them!—not through the head, but the heart. Through some reflected light of feeling she had lived those last days of his life at a height above her former level. She had seen in the social outlaw who loved her a soul that, woman-like, she placed above where she knelt. Perhaps it had been the uncivilized heroism, perhaps the unselfish, deliberate sacrifice, appealing to a hero-worshiper. Something finer in nature than she had ever been touched by in a more civilized life had come to her through him in those last days—not through the man as men knew him, and not through the love he had borne her—but through the spirit she thought she saw there.

It may have been in part an illusion—women have so many—but it was strong in her. It raised up her life to touch the thing she had placed on the heights, and something of the elation that had come to him through that last sacrifice filled her, and forbade her return into the narrowed valleys of existence.

His wasted life! It had been given at last to the wild places he loved. It had left its mark on the humanity of them, and the mark had not been a mean one. The girl, thinking of what it had done for her, wondered often if the other lives of the valley that winter could live on without carrying indelible coloring from grateful, remorseful emotions born there. She did not realize how transient emotions are in some people; and then she had grown to idealize him so greatly. She fancied herself surely one of many, while really she was one alone.

"Yes, lass—a woeful waste," repeated the old man; and her thoughts wandered back to their starting-place.

"No!" she answered with the sturdy certainty of faith. "The prodigality there was not wastefulness, and was not without a method—not a method of his own, but that something beyond us we call God or Fate. The lives he lived or died for may seem of mighty little consequence individually, but what is, is more than likely to be right, Davy MacDougall, even if we can't see it from our point of view." Then, after a little, she added, "He is not the first lion that has died to feed dogs—there was that man of Nazareth."

Davy MacDougall stopped, looking at her with fond, aged eyes that shone perplexedly from under his shaggy brows.

"You're a rare, strange lass, Rachel Hardy," he said at last, "an' long as I've known ye, I'm not ower certain that I know ye at all. The lad used to be a bit like that at times, but when I see ye last at the night, I'm ne'er right certain what I'll find ye in the mornin'."

"You'll never find me far from that, at any rate," and she motioned up the "Hill of the Witches," and on a sunny level a little above them Mowitza and Kalitan were waiting.

"Then, lass, ye'll ne'er tak' leave o' the Kootenai hills?"

"I think not. I should smother now in the life those people are going to," and she nodded after the departing guests who were going back to the world. Then her eyes turned from the mists of the valleys to the whispering peace of cedars that guard Scot's Mountain.

"No, Davy, I'll never leave the hills."