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 in his arms. He looked down at her and in her eyes he beheld a miracle.

He bent and kissed her lips. He told her then that he loved her, and she answered quietly:

"And I love you, Lachlan McDonald, though I did not know it till now."

O'Sullivan had come forward as she spoke, and she held out her hand to him and he pressed it between his hands.

"I have known it for a long while, Jolie," he said softly, "ever since our first days on the mountain. I was only afraid that you would not discover it in time."

He paused and looked at her gravely.

"Captain Falcon is dead," he told her very gently. "Will you go back to the camp and tell Almayne what has happened here?"

When she had gone O'Sullivan turned to Lachlan.

"It was God's will, God's goodness," he said reverently. "She came out of her hut and ran to me where I sat on watch beside the ashes of the fire—Almayne had left me not five minutes before. She had dreamed, she said, that you were in peril here in the meadow, and I remembered that you had come this way and had taken my sword. We ran down the path together, but she was swifter and left me a little behind."

The little man stood silent a moment.

"God's ways are strange," he continued. "From the path above I saw what happened. She came out into the meadow a moment before you attacked. I