.

"No, you didn't kill him," repeated Father John. "On that same night of
the storm when you thought you left him dead in the trail, he stumbled
back to his cabin, alive. But God's vengeance came soon.

"A few days later, while drunk, he missed his footing and fell from a
ledge to his death. His wife, poor creature, wished him buried in sight
of the cabin door--"

But in this moment Roger McKay was thinking less of Breault the Ferret
and the loosening of the hangman's rope from about his neck than he was
of another thing. And Father John was saying in a voice that seemed far
away and unreal:

"We've sent out word to all parts of the north, hoping someone would
find you and send you back. And she has prayed each night, and each
hour of the day the same prayer has been in her heart and on her lips.
And now--"

Someone was coming to them from the direction of the cabin--someone, a
girl, and she was singing,

McKay's face went whiter than the gray ash of fire.

"My God," he whispered huskily. "I thought--she had died!"

It was only then Father John understood the meaning of what he had seen
in his face.

"No, she is alive," he cried. "I sent her straight north through the
bush with an Indian the day after the fire. And later I left word for
you with the Fire Relief Committee at Fort William, where I thought you
would first enquire."

"And it was there," said Jolly Roger, "that I did not enquire at all!"

In the edge of the clearing, close to the thicket of timber, Nada had
stopped. For across the open space a strange looking creature had raced
at the sound of her voice; a dog with bristling Airedale whiskers, and
a hound's legs, and wild-wolf's body hardened and roughened by months
of fighting in the wilderness. As in the days of his puppyhood, Peter
leapt up against her, and a cry burst from Nada's lips, a wild and
sobbing cry of _Peter, Peter, Peter_--and it was this cry Jolly Roger
heard as he tore away from Father John.

On her knees, with her arms about Peter's shaggy head, Nada stared
wildly at the clump of timber, and in a moment she saw a man break out
of it, and stand still, as if the mellow sunlight blinded him, and made
him unable to move. And the same choking weakness was at her own heart
as she rose up from Peter, and reached out her arms toward the gray
figure in the edge of the wood, sobbing, trying to speak and yet saying
no word.

And a little slower, because of his age, Father John came a