he
home of man. The hollow, from where Peter stood, was a velvety carpet
of green, thickly strewn with flowers and ferns, sweet with the scent
of violets and wild honey-suckle, and filled with the song of birds.
Through the middle of it purled a tiny creek which disappeared between
the ragged shoulders of rock, and close to this creek stood the cabin,
its log walls smothered under a luxuriant growth of wood-vine. But
Peter's quizzical little eyes were not measuring the beauty of the
place, nor were his ears listening to the singing of birds, or the
chattering of a red-squirrel on a stub a few yards away. He was looking
beyond the cabin, to a chalk-white mass of rock that rose like a giant
mushroom in the edge of the trees--and he was listening to the ringing
of the axe, and straining his ears to catch the sound of a voice.

It was the voice he wanted most of all, and when this did not come he
choked back a whimper in his throat, and went down to the creek, and
waded through it, and came up cautiously behind the cabin, his eyes and
ears alert and his loosely jointed legs ready for flight at a sign of
danger. He wanted to set up his sharp yipping signal for the girl, but
the menace of the axe choked back his desire. At the very end of the
cabin, where the wood-vine grew thick and dense, Peter had burrowed
himself a hiding-place, and into this he skulked with the quickness of
a rat getting away from its enemies. From this protecting screen he
cautiously poked forth his whiskered face, to make what inventory he
could of his chances for supper and a safe home-coming.

And as he looked forth his heart gave a sudden jump.

It was the girl, and not the man who was using the axe today. At the
big wood-pile half a stone's throw away he saw the shimmer of her brown
curls in the sun, and a glimpse of her white face as it was turned for
an instant toward the cabin. In his gladness he would have leaped out,
but the curse of a voice he had learned to dread held him back.

A man had come out of the cabin, and close behind the man, a woman. The
man was a long, lean, cadaverous-faced creature, and Peter knew that
the devil was in him as he stood there at the cabin door. His breath,
if one had stood close enough to smell it, was heavy with whiskey.
Tobacco juice stained the corners of his mouth, and his one eye gleamed
with an animal-like exultation as he nodded toward the girl with the
shining curls

"Mooney says he'll pay seven-fif