Ferret would be more than human to
do that after what wind and storm and fire had done for them.

This first day of their pilgrimage into the southland was a day of
glory from its beginning until the setting of the sun. There was no
cloud in the sky. And it grew warmer, until Jolly Roger flung back the
hood of his parkee and turned up the fur of his cap. That night a
million stars lighted the heaven.

After this first day and night nothing could break down the hope and
confidence of Jolly Roger and his, dog. Peter knew they were going
south, in which direction lay everything he had ever yearned for; and
each night beside their campfire McKay made a note with pencil and
paper and measured the distance they had come and the distance they had
yet to go. Hope in a little while became certainty. Into his mind urged
no thought of changes that might have taken place at Cragg's Ridge; or,
if the thought did come, it caused him no uneasiness. Now that Jed
Hawkins was dead Nada would be with the little old Missioner in whose
care he had left her, and not for an instant did a doubt cloud the
growing happiness of his anticipations. Breault and the hunters of the
law were the one worry that lay ahead and behind him. If he outwitted
them he would find Nada waiting for him.

Day after day they kept south and west until they struck the Thelon;
and then through a country unmapped, and at times terrific in its cold
and storm, they fought steadily to the frozen regions of the Dubawnt
waterways. Only once in the first three weeks did they seek human
company. This was at a small Indian camp where Jolly Roger bartered for
caribou meat and moccasins for Peter's feet. Twice between there and
God's Lake they stopped at trappers' cabins.

It was early in March when they struck the Lost Lake country, three
hundred miles from Cragg's Ridge.

And here it was, buried under a blind of soft snow, that Peter nosed
out the frozen carcass of a disemboweled buck which Boileau, the French
trapper, had poisoned for wolves. Jolly Roger had built a fire and was
warming half a pint of deer tallow for a baking of bannock, when Peter
dragged himself in, his rear legs already stiffening with the palsy of
strychnine. In a dozen seconds McKay had the warm tallow down Peter's
throat, to the last drop of it; and this he followed with another dose
as quickly as he could heat it, and in the end Peter gave up what he
had eaten.

Half an hour later Boileau, who w