. But he felt that desire now. Before the night
was much older he would do unto Hawkins and Mooney as Hawkins had done
unto Peter. He would leave them alive, but broken and crippled and
forever punished.

And then he stumbled over something in another darkening of the moon.
He stopped, and the light came again, and he looked down into the
upturned face of Jed Hawkins. It was a distorted and twisted face, and
its one eye was closed. The body did not move. And close to the head
was the club which Nada had used.

Jolly Roger laughed grimly. Fate was kind to him in making a half of
his work so easy. But he wanted Hawkins to rouse himself first. Roughly
he stirred him with the toe of his boot.

"Wake up, you fiend," he said. "I'm going to break your bones, your
arms, your legs, just as you broke Peter--and that poor old woman back
in the cabin. Wake up!"

Jed Hawkins made no stir. He was strangely limp. For many seconds Jolly
Roger stood looking down at him, his eyes growing wider, more staring.
Darkness came again. It was an inky blackness this time, like a blotter
over the world. Low thunder came out of the west. The tree-tops
whispered in a frightened sort of way. And Jolly Roger could hear his
heart beating. He dropped upon his knees, and his hands moved over Jed
Hawkins. For a space not even Peter could have heard his movement or
his breath.

In the ebon darkness he rose to his feet, and the night--lifelessly
still for a moment--heard the one choking word that came from his lips.

"Dead!"

And there he stood, the heat of his rage changing to an icy chill, his
heart dragging within him like a chunk of lead, his breath choking in
his throat. Jed Hawkins was dead! He was growing stiff there in the
black trail. He had ceased to breathe. He had ceased to be a part of
life. And the wind, rising a little with the coming of storm, seemed to
whisper and chortle over the horrible thing, and the lone wolf in
Indian Tom's swamp howled weirdly, as if he smelled death.

Jolly Roger McKay's finger-nails dug into the flesh of his palms. If he
had killed the human viper at his feet, if his own hands had meted out
his punishment, he would not have felt the clammy terror that wrapped
itself about him in the darkness. But he had come too late. It was Nada
who had killed Jed Hawkins. Nada, with her woman's soul just born in
all its glory, had taken the life of her foster-father. And Canadian
law knew no excuse for killing.

The