"Never?"

"Never!"

"Then--I want nothing more in this life," she said, nestling against
him again. "Only you, for ever and ever."

Jolly Roger made no answer, but held her a long time in his arms, with
the soft beating of her heart against him, and listened to the twitter
and song of nesting and mating things about them. In this silence she
lay content, until Peter--growing restless--started quietly into the
golden depths of the forest.

It was _Pied-Bot_'s going, cautious and soft-footed, as if danger and
menace might lurk just ahead of him, that brought another look into
McKay's eyes as Nada's hand crept to his cheek, and rested there.

"You love me--very much?"

"More than life," he answered, and as he spoke he was watching Peter,
questing the soft wind that came whispering from the south.

Her finger touched his lips, gentle and sweet.

"And wherever you go, I go--forever and always?" she questioned.

"Yes, forever and always"--and his eyes were looking through miles upon
miles of deep forest, and at the end he saw the thin and pitiless face
of a man who was following his trail, Breault the Ferret.

His arms closed more tightly about her, and he pressed her face against
him.

"And I pray God you will never be sorry," he said, still looking
through the miles of forest.

"No, no--sorry I shall never be," she cried softly. "Not if we fly, and
go hungry, and fight--and die. Never shall I be sorry--with you," and
he felt the tightening of her arms.

And then, as he remained silent, with his lips on the velvety
smoothness of her hair, she told him what Father John had already told
him--of her wild effort to overtake him in that night of storm when he
had fled from the Missioner's cabin at Cragg's Ridge; and in turn he
told her how Peter came to him in the break of the morning with the
treasure which had saved him heart and soul, and how he had given that
treasure into the keeping of Yellow Bird, on the shores of Wollaston.

And thereafter, for an hour, as they wandered through the May-time
sweetness of the forest, she would permit him to talk of only Yellow
Bird and Sun Cloud; and, one thing leading to another, she learned how
it was that Yellow Bird had been his fairy in childhood days, and how
he came to be an outlaw for her in later manhood. Her eyes were shining
when he had finished, and her red lips were a-tremble with the
quickness of her breathing.

"Some day--you'll take me there," she whispere