He stood up again, and Peter saw the old smile on his master's lips as
Jolly Roger looked up into the swirling black canopy of the
spruce-tops. And the wailing of the storm seemed no longer to hold
menace and taunt, but in it he heard the whisper of fierce, strong
voices urging upon him the conviction that had already swept indecision
from his heart.

And then he said, holding out his arms as if encompassing something
which he could not see.

"Peter, we're going back to Nada!"

Dawn was a scarcely perceptible thing when it came. Darkness seemed to
fade a little, that was all. Frosty shapes took form in the gloom, and
the spruce-tops became tangible in an abyss of sepulchral shadow
overhead.

Through this beginning of the barren-land day Jolly Roger set out in
the direction of his cabin and in his blood was that new singing thing
of fire and warmth that more than made up for the hours of sleep he had
lost during the night. The storm was dying out, he thought, and it was
growing warmer; yet the wind whistled and raved in the open spaces and
his thermometer registered the fortieth and a fraction degree below
zero. The air he breathed was softer, he fancied, yet it was still
heavy with the stinging shot of blizzard; and where yesterday he had
seen only the smothering chaos of twisted spruce and piled up snow,
there was now--as the pale day broadened--his old wonderland of savage
beauty, awaiting only a flash of sunlight to transform it into the pure
glory of a thing indescribable. But the sun did not come and Jolly
Roger did not miss it over-much for his heart was full of Nada, and
a-thrill with the inspiration of his home-going.

"That's what it means, _going home_," he said to Peter, who nosed close in
the path of his snowshoes. "There's a thousand miles between us and
Cragg's Ridge, a thousand miles of snow and ice--and hell, mebby. But
we'll make it!"

He was sure of himself now. It was as if he had come up from out of the
shadow of a great sickness. He had been unwise. He had not reasoned as
a man should reason. The hangman might be waiting for him at Cragg's
Ridge, down on the rim of civilization, but that same grim executioner
was also pursuing close at his heels. He would always be pursuing in
the form of a Breault, a Cassidy, a Tavish, or a Somebody Else of the
Royal Northwest Mounted Police. It would be that way until the end
came. And when the end did come, when they finally got him, the blow
would be e