Peter did she whisper her secret, but waited and listened
for Jolly Roger, and when at last she heard him and he came through the
screen of jackpines, the color in her cheeks was like the stain of
strawberries crimsoning her finger-tips. In an instant, looking down
upon her, Jolly Roger saw what Peter had not discovered, and he stopped
in his tracks, his heart thumping like a hammer inside him. Never, even
in his dreams, had the girl looked lovelier than she did now, and never
had her eyes met his eyes as they met them today, and never had her red
lips said as much to him, without uttering a word. In the same instant
he saw the livid bruise, half hidden under her hair--and then he saw a
big bundle behind her, partly screened by a dwarfed banksian. After
that his eyes went back to the bruise.

"Jed Hawkins didn't do it," said Nada, knowing what was in his mind.
"It was Jed's woman. And you can't kill her!" she added a little
defiantly.

Jolly Roger caught the choking throb in her throat, and he knew she was
lying. But Nada thrust Peter from her lap, and stood up, and she seemed
taller and more like a woman than ever before in her life as she faced
Jolly Roger there in the tiny open, with violets and buttercups and red
strawberries in the soft grass under their feet. And behind them, and
very near, a rival to the warbler in the meadow began singing. But Nada
did not hear. The color had rushed hot into her cheeks at first, but
now it was fading out as swiftly, and her hands trembled, clasped in
front of her. But the blue in her eyes was as steady as the blue in the
sky as she looked at Jolly Roger.

"I'm not going back to Jed Hawkins' any more, Mister Roger," she said.

A soft breath of wind lifted the tress of hair from her forehead,
revealing more clearly the mark of Jed Hawkins' brutality, and Nada saw
gathering in Jolly Roger's eyes that cold, steely glitter which always
frightened her when it came. His hands clenched, and when she reached
out and touched his arm the flesh of it was as hard as white birch.
Even in her fear there was glory in the thought that at a word from her
he would kill the man who had struck her. Her fingers crept up his arm,
timidly, and the blue in her eyes darkened, and there was a pleading
tremble in the curve of her lips as she looked straight at him.

"I'm not going back," she repeated.

Jolly Roger, looking beyond her, saw the significance of the bundle.
His eyes met her steady gaze