their trail, and following it with the
merciless determination of the ferret from which he had been named,
there was no shadow of doubt in the mind of Jolly Roger McKay. So after
outfitting his pack at a little corner shop, where Breault would be
slow to enquire about him, he struck north through the bush toward Dog
Lake and the river of the same name. Five or six days, he thought,
would bring him to Father John and the truth which he dreaded more and
more to hear.

The despondency of his master had sunk, in some mysterious way, into
the soul of Peter. Without the understanding of language he sensed the
oppressive gloom of tragedy behind and about him and there was a
wolfish slinking in the manner of his travel now, and his confidence
was going as he caught the disease of despair of the man who traveled
with him. But constantly and vigilantly his eyes and scent were
questing about them, suspicious of the very winds that whispered in the
treetops. And at night after they had built their little cooking fire
in the deepest heart of the bush he would lie half awake during the
hours of darkness, the watchfulness of his senses never completely
dulled in the stupor of sleep.

Since the night they had stopped at the settler's cabin Jolly Roger's
face had grown grayer and thinner. A number of times he had tried to
assure himself what he would do in that moment which was coming when he
would stand face to face with Breault the man-hunter. His caution,
after he left Fort William, was in a way an automatic instinct that
worked for self-preservation in face of the fact that he was growing
less and less concerned regarding Breault's appearance. It was not in
his desire to delay the end much longer. The chase had been a long one,
with its thrills and its happiness at times, but now he was growing
tired and with Nada gone there was only hopeless gloom ahead. If she
were dead he wanted to go to her. That thought was a dawning pleasure
in his breast, and it was warm in his heart when he tied in a hard knot
the buckskin string which locked the flap of his pistol holster. When
Breault overtook him the law would know, because of the significance of
this knot, that he had welcomed the end of the game.

Never in the northland had there come a spring more beautiful than this
of the year in which McKay and his dog went through the deep wilds to
Pashkokogon Lake. In a few hours, it seemed, the last chill died out of
the air and there came the