In a hundred different ways he saw her face, a will-o-the-wisp thing amid the flames; an illusive, very girlish, almost childish face--yet always with the light of a woman's soul shining in it.

That was the miracle which startled him at last.

It seemed as if the fiction he built up in his despair transformed itself subtly into fact and that her soul had come to him from out of the southland and was speaking to him with eyes which never changed or faltered in their adoration, their faith and their courage.

She seemed to come to him, to creep into his arms under the folds of the blanket and he sensed the soft crush of her hair, the touch of her lips, the warm encircling of her arms about his neck.

Closer to him pressed the mystery, until the beating of her heart was a living pulse against him; and then--suddenly, as an irresistible impulse closed his arms to hold the spirit to him, his eyes were drawn to the heart of the fire, and he saw there for an instant, wide-eyed and speaking to him, the face of Yellow Bird the Indian sorceress.