ered in a pair
of arms, his head was jerked back, and against his hard and pitiless
mouth a pair of soft red lips pressed for a single thrilling instant.
"Well, I'll be damned," he gasped, dropping his bacon and staggering to
his feet like a man who had been shot. "I'll be--_cussed_!"

And he picked up his pack and walked off into the thick young spruce at
the edge of the timber, without saying another word or once looking
behind him. And breakfast waited, and Nada and Jolly Roger and Peter
waited, but Francois Breault did not return. For a strange and
unaccountable man was he, a hard and pitiless man and a deadly hunter
who knew no fear. Yet the wilderness swallowed him, a coward at
last--running away from the two red lips that had kissed him.

So went Breault, for the first time in his life a messenger of mercy;
and at the top of the silver birch the little warbler knew that
something glad had happened, and offered up its gratitude in a sudden
burst of song.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Country Beyond, by James Oliver Curwood

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