he was not sleeping, or traveling, or teaching
Peter he was usually reading the wonderful little red volumes of
history which he had purloined from the mail sledge up near the Barren
Lands. He knew their contents nearly by heart. His favorites were the
life-stories of Napoleon, Margaret of Anjou, and Peter the Great, and
always when he compared his own troubles with the difficulties and
tragedies over which these people had triumphed he felt a new courage
and inspiration, and faced the world with better cheer. If Nature was
his God and Bible, and Nada his Angel, these finger-worn little books
written by a man half a century dead were voices out of the past urging
him on to his best. Their pages were filled with the vivid lessons of
sacrifice, of courage and achievement, of loyalty, honor and
dishonor--and of the crashing tragedy which comes always with the last
supreme egoism and arrogance of man. He marked the dividing lines, and
applied them to himself. And he told Peter of his conclusions. He felt
a consuming tenderness for the glorious Margaret of Anjou, and his
heart thrilled one day when a voice seemed to whisper to him out of the
printed page that Nada was another Margaret--only more wonderful
because she was not a princess and a queen.

"The only difference," he explained to Peter, "is that Margaret
sacrificed and fought and died for a king, and our Nada is willing to
do all that for a poor beggar of an outlaw. Which makes Margaret a
second-rater compared with Nada," he added. "For Margaret wanted a
kingdom along with her husband, and Nada would take--just you and me.
And that's where we're pulling some Peter the Great stuff," he tried to
laugh. "We won't let her do it!"

And so they went on, day after day, toward the Wollaston waterways--the
country of Yellow Bird and her people.

It was early September when they crossed the Geikie and struck up the
western shore of Wollaston Lake. The first golden tints were ripening
in the canoe-birch leaves, and the tremulous whisper of autumn was in
the rustle of the aspen trees. The poplars were yellowing, the ash were
blood red with fruit, and in cool, dank thickets wild currants were
glossy black and lusciously ripe. It was the season which Jolly Roger
loved most of all, and it was the beginning of Peter's first September.
The days were still hot, but at night there was a bracing something in
the air that stirred the blood, and Peter found a sharp, new note in
the voi