This first night and dawn in the heard of his wilderness, with the new import of life gleaming down at him from the mighty peaks of the Chugach and Kenai ranges, marked the beginning of that uplift which drew Alan out of the pit into which he had fallen.

He understood, now, how it was that through many long years his father had worshiped the memory of a woman who had died, it seemed to him, an infinity ago.

Unnumbered times he had seen the miracle of her presence in his father's eyes, and once, when they had stood overlooking a sun-filled valley back in the mountains, the elder Holt had said: "Twenty-seven years ago the twelfth day of last month, mother went with me through this valley, Alan.

Do you see the little bend in the creek, with the great rock in the sun?
We rested there--before you were born!" He had spoken of that day as if it had been but yesterday.

And Alan recalled the strange happiness in his father's face as he had looked down upon something in the valley which no other but himself could see.
And it was happiness, the same strange, soul-aching happiness, that began to build itself a house close up against the grief in Alan's heart.