st with me? I've a stranger in
the cabin, still sleeping, who's going into the fire country from which
you've come. He's hunting for some one, and maybe you can give him
information. He's going to Cragg's Ridge."

"Cragg's Ridge!" exclaimed Jolly Roger. "What is his name?"

"Breault," said the youth. "Sergeant Breault, of the Royal Northwest
Mounted Police."

Jolly Roger turned to stroke the neck of a horse waiting for its
morning feed. But he felt nothing of the touch of flesh under his hand.
Cold as iron went his heart, and for half a minute he made no answer.
Then he said:

"Thanks, friend. I breakfasted before it was light and I'm hitting out
into the brush west and north, for the Rainy River country. Please
don't tell this man Breault that you saw me, for he'll think badly of
me for not waiting to give him information he might want. But--you
understand--if you loved the brother who died--that it's hard for me to
talk with anyone just now."

The young man's fingers touched his arm again.

"I understand," he said, "and I hope to God you'll find her."

Silently they shook hands, and Jolly Roger hurried away from the cabin
with the rising spiral of smoke.

Three days later a man and a dog came from the burned country into the
town of Fort William, seeking for a wandering messenger of God who
called himself Father John, and a young and beautiful girl whose name
was Nada Hawkins. He stopped first at the old mission, in whose shadow
the Indians and traders of a century before had bartered their wares,
and Father Augustine, the aged patriarch who talked with him, murmured
as he went that he was a strange man, and a sick one, with a little
madness lurking in his eyes.

And it was, in fact, a madness of despair eating out the life in Jolly
Roger's heart. For he no longer had hope Nada had escaped the fire,
even though at no place had he found a conclusive evidence of her
death. But that signified little, for there were many of the missing
who had not been found between the last of September and these days of
May. What he did find, with deadly regularity, was the fact that Father
John had escaped--and that he had traveled to safety ALONE.

And Father Augustine told him that when Father John stopped to rest for
a few days at the Mission he was heading north, for somewhere on
Pashkokogon Lake near the river Albany.

There was little rest for Peter and his master at Fort William town.
That Breault must be close on