He remembered, faintly, leading several unsuccessful expeditions in search of the gold which he and the Frenchmen had discovered, and that once he went to a great city, which must have been Montreal, and that he stayed there a long time doing something for the Hudson Bay Company, and met a girl whom he married.
When he spoke of the girl John Ball's eyes would glow feverishly and her name would fall from him in a moaning sob.

For as yet returning reason had not placed the hand of age upon him.

It was as if he was awakening from a deep sleep, and Dolores, his young wife, had been with him but a few hours before.
There came another break in John Ball's life after this.

He could not remember how, long they lived in Montreal, but he knew that after a time he returned with his wife into the far North, and that they were very happy, and one summer set off in a canoe to search for the lost chasm together.

They found it.