CHAPTER XXI.

Trascott arose suddenly from his chair and leaned upon the table.

"My God, my God," he groaned in intense commiseration, "this is terrible-to have such a thing thrust upon you!"

The lawyer had sprung from his position of attentiveness against the wall to the curate's side, and he, too, leaned toward Britton, who sat motionless like a carven statue.

"Self-defence!" he exclaimed forcibly. "Was there any trouble? If there will be any-"

But Rex checked him with an eloquent glance, reproving the professional instinct.

"There will be no trouble in that way," he quietly observed. "Morris witnessed the struggle and the outcome from an upper peak, but he died on his return to Samson Creek without informing anyone but his wife. Maud Morris followed me from Dawson, and to-night threatened to expose me."

"How to-night?" Trascott wonderingly asked.

"She was the Mahatma woman-the theosophist, at Lord Rowland's!"

The curate and the lawyer uttered simultaneous exclamations of helpless astonishment. Revelations were coming with such amazing rapidity and dramatic unexpectedness that speech failed the two men.

"She did not succeed in her intended intimidation," Rex said, "but she unwittingly taught me the true course to pursue in regard to this case."

"I trust that you had already recognized the true course," burst out Trascott, in an excess of eagerness.

"I too trust that same thing," Ainsworth hastened to add.

"Contrition!" said the curate.

"Indemnification!" the lawyer said.

Britton held a hand to each of them across the table.

"Thank you," he said in a choking voice, "thank you for that confidence."

"Your own survival," Ainsworth inquired, "-how was it accomplished?"

"I told you Pierre Giraud killed Simpson for insulting his wife," observed Britton. "He escaped the police and made for the mountain fastnesses, near the Klondike's head waters, with his dog-train. He found me half dead from starvation on one of the high plateaus-"

"Providence," Trascott broke in, "God's divine providence!"

"It could be nothing else," Rex agreed, "but Giraud's sacrifice was as beautiful as any act of Providence. He put me on his sled and drove straight for Dawson City and the surgeon, nourishing me all the way.

"To certain arrest?" cried Ainsworth, in profound astonishment. "He gave up his freedom for your sake?"

"Yes," was the answer. "The Mounted Police took him on sight. Giraud's doing three years for manslaughter-beastslaughter were truer-but he'll be rich when he comes out. I have taken good care of that."

"It was beautiful, beautiful!" murmured the curate, in rapture.

"That's the sort of men the great Northland breeds," said Britton. "They are men to the very marrow! But in the matter of contrition and indemnification-"

"Indemnification only," objected Ainsworth, stolidly. "I fail to recognize any guilt."

"But still he must feel contrition," argued Trascott, kindly. "And I know what remorseful penance has been yours," he added, to Britton.

"Half the gold of that Five Mountain strike should have been Lessari's," Rex declared.

"Failing that, it belonged to his heirs," the lawyer supplemented.

"I took that view," said Britton. "I am glad you uphold it. Is that your opinion also, Trascott? I asked you both here for the purpose of obtaining advice, faultless and impersonal judgment."

"It is my opinion," the curate answered. "It was undoubtedly your duty to effect any reparation within your power."

"That I did," Rex assured him. "In Dawson I made enquiries and found that Lessari had a daughter. People told me he had no other relation in the world. Of course, my plan was one difficult of execution. I couldn't give the girl a fortune without courting investigation and suspicion. Happily, however, I had seen her before, without knowing her name, and I soon became acquainted with her.

"Lessari's daughter was something of an artist, and I soon saw that she had inherited the great gift, that she was a veritable genius with the brush. That gave me my cue. I simulated eager interest in her work, hired instructors for her, paid for her board at a minister's house, and gave her every comfort she could have. She accepted my aid on the proud condition that she should repay me on attaining sufficient eminence to sell her work.

"Of course I agreed. The thing went on that way for a little while, but not for long. People began to talk about my relations with the girl-"

Ainsworth's fist banged an interruption on the table.

"As they will, d-n them," he cried.

"I am positive that the tongue of Maud Morris started the gossip," Rex said. "It got to the ears of the girl at last. She confronted me with the scandal they were heaping on her pure name. There was but one course left for me then."

"Ah!" gasped Trascott, in a kind of dread.

"I offered her marriage!"

"Good God!" shouted Ainsworth, losing all his control.

"And the girl?" stammered the unstrung curate.

"She accepted!"

An oppressive silence followed. Trascott's trembling tones were the first to break it.

"You married her?" was his horrified question. "With the red gulf of her father's blood between you?"

"I did," said Britton, "but the marriage I proposed was not the ordinary one. I offered her my name and money, without stain, to shield her from scandalous gossips. We are joined by law, but we live separate lives, exist in divided courses, and occupy different apartments. The marriage has never been consummated, and it never will be!"

"But it is wrong-entirely wrong!" cried the curate. "There is a divine purpose of marriage, and it cannot be ignored. The arrangement you have effected is a sham and a monstrosity! You did what you conceived right, but what of this virgin's due? What of her inexpressibly lonely life? What of her ice-cold domestic existence? What of the vital need of motherhood?"

"Yes," said Ainsworth, in addition, "have you fulfilled your own scope of life, reached the far vision of your own ideal? You cannot do it this way! You have paid a heavy forfeit, Britton, but you are in the wrong."

There ensued a deep pause. Rex stared at his friends with unseeing eyes and did not answer.

"Your judgment was faulty," Trascott summed up. "Did any influence pervert it?"

"Possibly," Britton replied in a clear voice. "I loved her! And loving her, I have had to live with her, keeping up the impassable barrier which separates us."

"Heaven pity you," sympathized Ainsworth. "No man has done a more heroic thing."

"I asked you for this interview to-night in order to hear and abide by your decision," Rex said constrainedly. "What is that decision? If your opinions coincide, I want the verdict."

"You must tell your wife all you have told us," Trascott solemnly adjured. "Full confession is the only remedy."

Britton glanced at Ainsworth. The latter nodded his agreement.

"That is the inevitable course," the lawyer said. "With this confession will come the separation. No other way lies open."

Rex swept all the cartridges on the table before him into one heap. The movement seemed to indicate that he had gathered all the tangled threads of this tragedy and bound them into a single strong rope which would extract him from the difficulty.

"You agreed that my search for Lessari's heirs was laudable," he observed quietly. "Together you condemned my method of reparation. You both decide on confession and divorce. Your minds work wonderfully well together, and because your judgment is infallible I accept your verdict."

"You will tell your wife?" questioned Ainsworth, with relief.

"Remember that Corsican blood runs in her veins," Britton said, partly in after-thought. "She may possibly kill me. The story of her father's death by an unknown hand was brought down by stampeders who followed me into Five Mountain Gulch on my second journey there after I had had my claims filed and had recovered from my starvation experience."

Trascott sat back in his chair again. "You can protect yourself," he declared earnestly. "You will not shirk. You must tell her."

Britton smiled with a very strange expression. "I have told her," he said.

"When?" cried both his friends.

"A few minutes ago," Rex answered. "I told her the truth for the first time, and I imparted the secret of my love for the first time!"

They regarded him incredulously.

"Where?" they asked, speaking again in chorus.

"Here, in this room!"

Trascott stared, but the lawyer, keener in perception, swiftly swept the room with his eyes, looking for a place of concealment. His glance reached the tapestry and he understood.

He stepped across the floor to the curtains and seized them with both hands.

"Is this the place of eavesdropping?" he cried in vexation, tossing the thick hangings apart.

Standing in the space of the double doorway, was Britton's wife.

"My friends," said Britton, "I thank you for letting her hear your just, impartial decision."

Mercia advanced to the centre of the room, while two of the three occupants regarded her astoundedly. Her cheeks were pale as whitest marble, and the pallor was accentuated by the pearly fairness of her arms and neck revealed by the evening dress which she still wore. She said nothing, but her eyes were fixed on those of her husband.

"This was prearrangement," snapped Ainsworth, his indignation overwhelming his astonishment.

"It was," Rex said. "I deemed it the only perfect way, and I ask your pardon for the advantage I took."

Trascott raised his palms helplessly, not knowing what to make of the trickery.

"He designed it for my benefit," Mercia said at last, in a measured tone, motioning to her husband. "I have heard everything!"

"Then it probably simplifies matters," the lawyer observed, cooling somewhat. "You will remember that your husband acted for what he thought was the best. The situation is an intolerable complexity. Be congratulated that its fibres are now laid bare! This marriage was a cruel error for both of you, and the error can be rectified to your mutual advantage."

"Not to my own," cried Britton, pained beyond measure. "I cherish the present, but I accept the future at your dictation."

"Whose dictation?" Mercia asked quickly.

"Trascott's and Ainsworth's," her husband answered. "Two of the finest minds in England. They are in the very front rank of their professions, and they have held the scales for many unbalanced lives. Ours have been weighed with wisdom by their hands. Mercia, do you understand their judgment-what their verdict means?"

She clasped her hands in a pitiful gesture, and her composure seemed about to break in a storm of tears, but she quelled the emotion with royal courage.

"I understand," Mercia said in a strained whisper, "but-but I heard you say that you cherished the present!"

Britton's eyes lighted and then grew sad again.

"It is sweet," he declared, "compared with what the future void will be. But the true balance must be adjusted, Mercia. There are maelstroms in our social lives more dangerous than the whirlpools on Thirty Mile. Here we must travel with keenest care; we must guard our strength longer. No men know the routes better than Ainsworth and Trascott, and they have traced out our paths."

"In the separation, the-the divorce," interposed the lawyer, "you may of course command my services."

"Of course," murmured Britton, "it must be given into no other hands. You can accomplish an immediate, quiet dissolution without any scandal."

"My services are bound up with Ainsworth's," Trascott put in. "My assistance may be needed afterwards, in the matter of home or occupation for your wife, though a settlement could provide for her fully."

"Thank you, Trascott," said Rex. "Just transfer the comradeship I have loved to my-to Mercia, and I shall always be grateful!"

Britton looked at Mercia with the pangs of renunciation rending and torturing him.

"Are you prepared for what they say is inevitable?" he asked.

"Are you, yourself?" she questioned in turn.

"I-I think so," Rex said, with the feeling of a man pronouncing his own death-knell. "We cannot be mistaken in going by the two guiding institutions of the land."

"What ones?" Mercia asked.

"The Church and the Law! Their voices are immutable."

"Yet there is present another voice still more immutable, still more unerring," Mercia cried in the clear, bell-like tone Rex had first heard when she hailed him at Indian River in the far-away Yukon.

"And that?" His tone was intensely eager. He leaned from his seat.

"Is the voice of the human heart," she answered with eyes agleam. "Have they considered it?"

"I do not know," said Britton, brokenly. Agonizing uncertainty choked him and muffled the beating of his heart.

"Should it not be included in the balancing?" Mercia persisted. She advanced another step and let her husband gaze into her great eyes as he would gaze into some holy sanctum. The two seemed drawn together, to the complete exclusion of Ainsworth and Trascott, the representative judges.

Causing a general start, the telephone bell whirred loudly in the library. Gubbins was in another part of the house. The bell buzzed frantically a second time, telling that the message must be insistent.

"Answer it, Trascott," Britton begged. "People do not speak at such an hour and in such a storm for a mere triviality."

"Certainly-by all means," said the curate, hurrying into the adjoining room.

Ainsworth, feeling his debarment from the physical presence of husband and wife, followed Trascott through the portieres. Britton was quite alone with the daughter of the man whose violent end he had unwillingly compassed.

Mercia moved to the side of the table and Rex arose. Her fingers played with the long hunting-knife till they idly unsheathed it. Then her lithe figure straightened back like the return of a bow, and the great blade flashed above her head. The bright eyes were veiled.

Britton's face went rigid. He folded his arms over his breast.

"Strike!" he said. "I forgot that you are a Corsican."

One moment Mercia held her position, then dashed the weapon down so that it quivered with its point in the floor.

"Ah, no, Rex!" she cried proudly, "for I love you! It was but a supreme test. I have always loved you!"

Her husband staggered as from a forcible shock.

"You?" he cried. "Oh, this is too incredible!"

"Trascott spoke of a red gulf between us," said Mercia. "My heart has crossed it, and it is no more. Forgiveness follows penance!"

"You forgive? You love?" sobbed Britton. "Just God! The mighty strike!"

He caught her hands passionately and retained them, while the curate's re-entrance interrupted the climax of their lives.

"Leave us, Trascott," Britton begged. "Come back here in an hour."

"In an hour, yes," Trascott assented. "But do you believe in retribution? That message came from Rossland House. The carriage which James was driving to the town was struck by lightning. He was only stunned, but the Mahatma woman was killed. Do you believe in retribution?" Trascott vanished through the doorway, leaving the question with them.

"The circle is completed," Mercia whispered.

"Yes," said Britton, extending his arms, "and we belong to each other!"

An hour later, Ainsworth and the curate entered the gun-room. It presented a singularly deserted appearance, and the light burned dimly. An envelope directed to Trascott was pinned to the table with the sheath-knife.

"Hallo!" exclaimed the lawyer. "That's odd! What's in it?"

The curate hurriedly tore open the letter with trembling fingers. He drew forth a draft on Britton's bank; the figure two followed by six ciphers, sprawling across its face, made Trascott's eyes bulge out and forced his breath in a shrill hiss between his teeth.

"God bless my soul!" he cried, and dropped the draft in extreme agitation.

Ainsworth picked it up smartly and, turning it over, read aloud a line pencilled on the back.

It ran: "For your London Homes! Mercia and I are seeking another fortune, clean and untainted!"

The lawyer whirled on his heel and looked at the wall behind him. It was clean as a new sheet. The Klondike outfits and trappings were gone!

"By heaven, there's a man," he vehemently asserted. "A man, Trascott! I'll drink a toast to him."

Ainsworth seized the decanter and poured himself a glass, holding it aloft.

"To the Stampeder!" he cried.

"Amen!" said Trascott

THE END.