d with her head in her arms, where she had flung herself
with Jolly Roger's last kiss of worship on her lips, and she was
sobbing like a child with its heart broken. And beside her knelt the
old gray Missioner, man of God in the deep forest, who stroked her hair
with his thin hand, whispering courage and consolation to her, with the
wind and rain beating overhead and the windows rattling to the
accompaniment of ghostly voices that shrieked and wailed in the
tree-tops outside.

Peter trembled at the sobbing, but his heart and his desire were with
the man who had gone. In his unreasoning little soul it was Jed Hawkins
who was rattling the windows with his unseen hands and who was pounding
at the door with the wind, and who was filling the black night with its
menace and fear. He hated this man, who lay back in the trail with his
lifeless face turned up to the deluge that poured out of the sky. And
he was afraid of the man, even as he hated him, and he believed that
Nada was afraid of him, and that because of her fear she was crying
there in the middle of the floor, with Father John patting her shoulder
and stroking her hair, and saying things to her which he could not
understand. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to feel himself close
against her, as Nada had held him so often in those hours when she had
unburdened her grief and her unhappiness to him. But even stronger than
this desire was the one to follow his master.

He went to the door, and thrust his nose against the crack at the
bottom of it. He felt the fierceness of the wind fighting to break in,
and the broken mist of it filled his nostrils. But there came no scent
of Jolly Roger McKay. For a moment he struggled at the crack with his
paws. Then he flopped himself down, his heart beating fast, and fixed
his eyes inquiringly on Nada and the Missioner.

His four and a half months of life in the big wilderness, and his weeks
of constant comradeship with Jolly Roger, had developed in him a brain
that was older than his body. No process of reasoning could impinge
upon him the fact that his master was an outlaw, but with the swift
experiences of tragedy and hiding and never-ceasing caution had come
instinctive processes which told him almost as much as reason. He knew
something was wrong tonight. It was in the air. He breathed it. It
thrilled in the crash of thunder, in the lightning fire, in the mighty
hands of the wind rocking the cabin and straining at the windows