Roger," she said quietly. "I heard you tell Peter
that a long time ago. And Mister Cassidy was at our place the day after
you and Peter ran away from Indian Tom's cabin, and I showed him the
way to Father John's, and he told me a lot about you, and he told
Father John a lot more, and it made me awful proud of you, Mister
Roger--and I want to go with you and Peter!"

"Proud!" gasped Jolly Roger. "Proud, of ME--"

She nodded again.

"Mister Cassidy--the policeman--he used just the word you used a minute
ago. He said you was square, even when you robbed other people. He said
he had to get you in jail if he could, but he hoped he never would. He
said he'd like to have a man like you for a brother. And Peter loves
you. And I--"

The color came into her white face.

"I'm goin' with you and Peter," she finished.

Something came to relieve the tenseness of the moment for Jolly Roger.
Peter, nosing in a thick patch of bunch-grass, put out a huge snowshoe
rabbit, and the two crashed in a startling avalanche through the young
jackpines, Peter's still puppyish voice yelling in a high staccato as
he pursued. Jolly Roger turned from Nada, and stared where they had
gone. But he was seeing nothing. He knew the hour of his mightiest
fight had come. In the reckless years of his adventuring he had more
than once faced death. He had starved. He had frozen. He had run the
deadliest gantlets of the elements, of beast, and of man. Yet was the
strife in him now the greatest of all his life. His heart thumped. His
brain was swirling in a vague and chaotic struggle for the mastery of
things, and as he fought with himself--his unseeing eyes fixed on the
spot where Peter and the snowshoe rabbit had disappeared--he heard
Nada's voice behind him, saying again that she was going with him and
Peter. In those seconds he felt himself giving way, and the determined
action he had built up for himself began to crumble like sand. He had
made his confession and in spite of it this young girl he
worshipped--sweeter and purer than the flowers of the forest--was
urging herself upon him! And his soul cried out for him to turn about,
and open his arms to her, and gather her into them for as long as God
saw fit to give him freedom and life.

But still he fought against that mighty urge, dragging reason and right
back fragment by fragment, while Nada stood behind him, her wide-open,
childishly beautiful eyes beginning to comprehend the struggle that was
di