is breath he was snarling when he went on. Hatred, for a
moment, had flamed hot in his soul. Then he turned, and buried himself
in a clump of balsams that reached out into the plain, and a few
moments later came to the edge of a tiny meadow in the heart of them,
where a warbler was bursting its throat in evening-song.

Around the edge of the meadow Peter circled, his feet deep in
buttercups and red fire-flowers, and crushing softly ripe strawberries
that grew in scarlet profusion in the open, until he came to a screen
of young jackpines, and through these he quietly and apologetically
nosed his way. Then he stood wagging his tail, with Nada sitting on the
grass half a dozen steps from him, wiping the strawberry stain from her
finger-tips. And the stain was on her red lips, and a bit of it against
the flush of her cheek, as she gave a little cry of gladness and
greeting to Peter. Her eyes flashed beyond him, and every drop of blood
in her slim, beautiful little body seemed to be throbbing with an
excitement new to Peter as she looked for Jolly Roger.

Peter went to her, and dropped down, with his head in her lap, and
looking up through his bushy eye-brows he saw a livid bruise just under
the ripples of her brown hair, where there had been no mark yesterday,
or the day before. Nada's hands drew him closer, until he was half in
her lap, and she bent her face down to him, so that her thick, shining
hair fell all about him. Peter loved her hair, almost as much as Jolly
Roger loved it, and he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath of
content as the smothering sweetness of it shut out the sunlight from
him.

"Peter," she whispered, "I'm almost scared to have him come today. I've
promised him. You remember--I promised to tell him if Jed Hawkins
struck me again. And he has! He made that mark, and if Jolly Roger
knows it he'll kill him. I've got to lie--lie--"

Peter wriggled, to show his interest, and his hard tail thumped the
ground. For a space Nada said nothing more, and he could hear and feel
the beating of her heart close down against him. Then she raised her
head, and looked in the direction from which she would first hear Jolly
Roger as he came through the young jackpines. Peter, with his eyes half
closed in a vast contentment, did not see or sense the change in her
today--that her blue eyes were brighter, her cheeks flushed, and in her
body a strange and subdued throbbing that had never been there before.
Not even to