hat twist in the trail where long ago Jed
Hawkins had lain dead on his back. Half a mile beyond he came to the
railroad. Here it was that the fire had burned hottest, for as far as
his vision went he could see no sign of life or of forest green alight
in the waning sun.

And now there fell upon him, along with the desolation of despair, a
something grimmer and more terrible--a thing that was fear. About him
everywhere reached this graveyard of death, leaving no spot untouched.
Was it possible that Nada and the Missioner had not escaped its fury?
The fear settled upon him more heavily as the sun went down and the
gloom of evening came, bringing with it an unpleasant chill and a
cloying odor of things burned dead.

He did not talk to Peter now. There was a lamp in the cabin and wood
behind the stove, and silently he built a fire and trimmed and lighted
the wick when darkness came. And Peter, as if hiding from the ghosts of
yesterday, slunk into a corner and lay there unmoving and still. And
McKay did not get supper nor did he smoke, but after a long time he
carried his blankets into Nada's room, and spread them out upon her
bed. Then he put out the light and quietly laid himself down where
through the nights of many a month and year Nada had slept in the moon
glow.

The moon was there tonight. The faint glow of it rose in the east and
swiftly it climbed over the ragged shoulder of Cragg's Ridge, flooding
the blackened world with light and filling the room with a soft and
golden radiance. It was a moon undimmed, full and round and yellow; and
it seemed to smile in through the window as if some living spirit in it
had not yet missed Nada, and was embracing her in its glory. And now it
came upon Jolly Roger why she had loved it even more than she had loved
the sun; for through the little window it shut out all the rest of the
world, and sitting up, he seemed to hear her heart beating at his side
and clearly he saw her face in the light of it and her slim arms
out-reaching, as if to gather it to her breast. Thus--many times, she
had told him--had she sat up in her bed to greet the moon and to look
for the smiling face that was almost always there, the face of the Man
in the Moon, her friend and playmate in the sky.

For a space his heart leapt up; and then, as if discovery of the
usurper in her room had come, a cloud swept over the face of the moon
like a mighty hand and darkness crowded him in. But the cloud sailed on
a