p
exclamation from his lips.

His canoe and outfit were gone!

Out of the star-gloom behind him floated a soft ripple of laughter as
Yellow Bird ran to her tepee.

And from the mist of water--far out--came a voice, the voice of Jolly
Roger McKay.

"Goodby, Cassidy!"

With it mingled the defiant bark of a dog.

In her tepee, a moment later, Yellow Bird drew Sun Cloud's glossy head
close against her warm breast, and turned her radiant face up
thankfully to the smoke hole in the tepee top, through which the
spirits had whispered their warning to her. Indistinctly, and still
farther away, her straining ears heard again the cry,

"Goodby, Cassidy!"

CHAPTER XII

In Cassidy's canoe, driving himself with steady strokes deeper into the
mystery of the starlit waters of Wollaston, Jolly Roger felt the night
suddenly filled with an exhilarating tonic. Its deadness was gone. Its
weight had lifted. A ripple broke the star gleams where an increasing
breeze touched the surface of the lake. And the thrill of adventure
stirred in his blood. He laughed as he put his skill and strength in
the sweep of his paddle, and for a time the thought that he was an
outlaw, and in losing Nada had lost everything in life worth righting
for, was not so oppressive. It was the old, joyous laugh, stirred by
his sense of humor, and the trick he had played on Cassidy. He could
imagine Cassidy back on the shore, his temper redder than his hair as
he cursed and tore up the sand in his search for another canoe.

"We're inseparable," Jolly Roger explained to Peter. "Wherever I go,
Cassidy is sure to follow. You see, it's this way. A long time ago
someone gave Cassidy what they call an assignment, and in that
assignment it says 'go get Jolly Roger McKay, dead or alive'--or
something to that effect. And Cassidy has been on the job ever since.
But he can't quite catch up with me, _Pied-Bot_. I'm always a little
ahead."

And yet, even as he laughed, there was in Jolly Roger's heart a
yearning to which he had never given voice. Half a dozen times he might
have killed Cassidy, and an equal number of times Cassidy might have
killed him. But neither had taken advantage of the opportunity to
destroy. They had played the long and thrilling game like men, and
because of the fairness and sportsmanship of the man who hunted him
Jolly Roger thought of Cassidy as he might have thought of a brother,
and more than once he yearned to go to him, and hold o