when the way was safe they
would head straight for the Barren Lands.

Peter, and only Peter, sensed the glory of that third afternoon when
they paddled slowly ashore close to the shimmering stream of spring
water that was called Limping Moose Creek. The sun was still two hours
high in the west. There was no wind, and Wollaston was like a mirror;
yet in the still air was the clean, cool tang of early autumn, and
shoreward the world reached out in ridges and billows of tinted
forests, with a September haze pulsing softly over them, fleecy as the
misty shower of a lady's powder puff. It was destined to be a memorable
afternoon for Peter, a going down of the sun that he would never forget
as long as he lived.

Yet there was no warning of the thing impending, and his eyes saw only
the mystery and wonder of the big world, and his ears heard only the
drowsing murmur of it, and his nose caught only the sweet scents of
cedars and balsams and of flowering and ripening things. Straight
ahead, beyond the white shore line, was a low ridge, and this
ridge--where it was not purple and black with the evergreen--was red
with the crimson blotches of mountain-ash berries, and patches of fire
flowers that glowed like flame in the setting sun.

From out of this paradise, as they drew near to it, came softly the
voice and song of birds and the chatter of red squirrels. A big jay was
screeching over it all, and between the first ridge and the
second--which rose still higher beyond it--a cloud of crows were
circling excitedly over a mother black bear and her half grown cubs as
they feasted on the red ash berries. But Peter could not smell the
bears, nor hear them, and the distant crows were of less interest than
the wonder and mystery of the shore close at hand.

He turned from his place in the bow of the canoe, and looked at his
master. There was little of inspiration in Jolly Roger's face or eyes.
The glory of the world ahead gave him no promise, as it gave promise to
Peter. Beyond what he could see there lay, for him, a vast emptiness, a
chaos of loneliness, an eternity of shattered hopes and broken dreams.
Love of life was gone out of him. He saw no beauty. The sun had
changed. The sky was different. The bigness of his wilderness no longer
thrilled him, but oppressed him.

Peter sensed sharply the change in his master without knowing the
reason for it. Just as the world had changed for Jolly Roger, so Jolly
Roger had changed for Pet