many loads of soft evergreens on his shoulders.

Into the forest Jolly Roger went alone, puffing furiously at his pipe.
He was all a-tremble and his blood seemed to quiver and dance as it ran
through his veins. Since the first rose-flush of dawn he had been
awake, fighting against this upsetting of every nerve that was in him.

He felt pitiably weak and helpless. But it was the weakness and
helplessness of a happiness too vast for him to measure. It was Nada in
her ragged shoes and dress, with the haunting torture of Jed Hawkins'
brutality in her eyes and face, that he had expected to find, if he
found her at all; someone to fight for, and kill for if necessary,
someone his muscle and brawn would always protect against evil. He had
not dreamed that in these many months with Father John she would change
from "a little kid goin' on eighteen" into--_a woman_.

He tried to recall just what he had said to her last night--that he was
still an outlaw, and would always be, no matter how well he lived from
this day on; and that she, now that she had Father John's protection,
was very foolish to care for him, or keep her troth with him, and would
be happier if she could forget what had happened at Cragg's Ridge.

"You're a _woman_ now," he said. "_A woman_--" he had emphasized that--"and
you don't need me any more."

And she had looked at him, without speaking, as if reading what was
inside him; and then, with a sudden little laugh, she swiftly pulled
her hair down about her shoulders, and repeated the very words she had
said to him a long time ago--"Without you--I'd want to
die--Mister--Jolly Roger," and with that she turned and ran into the
cabin, her hair flying riotously, and he had not seen her again since
that moment.

Since then his heart had behaved like a thing with the fever, and it
was beating swiftly now as he looked at his watch and noted the quick
passing of time.

Back in the cabin Peter was sniffing at the crack under Nada's door,
and listening to her movement. For a long time he had heard her, but
not once had she opened the door. And he wondered, after that, why
Oosimisk and her husband and Father John piled evergreens all about,
until the cabin looked like the little jackpine trysting-place down at
Cragg's Ridge, even to the soft carpet of grass on the floor, and
flowers scattered all about.

Hopeless of understanding what it meant, he went outside, and waited in
the warm May-day sun until his master c