A third time the order of the mysterious footprints in the sand was changed--and the grizzly was now following the boy, obliterating almost entirely the indentures in the sand of his small, moccasined feet.

He wondered whether it was possible that his eyes had gone bad on him, or that his mind had slipped out of its normal groove and was tricking him with weirdly absurd hallucinations.

So what happened in almost that same breath did not startle him as it might otherwise have done.

It was for a brief moment simply another assurance of his insanity; and if the mountains had suddenly turned over and balanced themselves on their peaks their gymnastics would not have frozen him into a more speechless stupidity than did the Girl who rose before him just then, not twenty paces away.

She had emerged like an apparition from behind a great boulder--a little older, a little taller, a bit wilder than she had seemed to him in the picture, but with that same glorious hair sweeping about her, and that same questioning look in her eyes as she stared at him.