e said to Peter,

"I take my cue from the sun, Peter Clubfoot. It's always shining, no
matter if the clouds are so thick underneath that we can't see it. A
laugh never hurts a man, unless he's got a frozen lung."

Jolly Roger did not cross the ford that day.

CHAPTER V

It was in the third week after his hurt that Peter saw Nada. By that
time he could easily follow Jolly Roger as far as the fording-place,
and there he would wait, sometimes hours at a stretch, while his
comrade and master went over to Cragg's Ridge. But frequently Jolly
Roger would not cross, but remained with Peter, and would lie on his
back at the edge of a grassy knoll they had found, reading one of the
little old-fashioned red books which Peter knew were very precious to
him. Often he wondered what was between the faded red covers that was
so interesting, and if he could have read he would have seen such
titles as "Margaret of Anjou," "History of Napoleon," "History of Peter
the Great," "Caesar," "Columbus the Discoverer," and so on through the
twenty volumes which Jolly Roger had taken from a wilderness mail two
years before, and which he now prized next to his life.

This afternoon, as they lay in the sleepy quiet of June, Jolly Roger
answered the questioning inquisitiveness in Peter's face and eyes.

"You see, _Pied-Bot_, it was this way," he said, beginning a little
apologetically. "I was dying for something to read, and I figgered
there'd be something on the Mail--newspapers, you know. So I stopped
it, and tied up the driver, and found these. And I swear I didn't take
anything else--that time. There's twenty of them, and they weigh nine
pounds, and in the last two years I've toted them five thousand miles.
I wouldn't trade them for my weight in gold, and I'm pretty heavy. I
named you after one of them--Peter. I pretty near called you
Christopher Columbus. And some day we've got to take these books to the
man they were going to, Peter. I've promised myself that. It seems sort
of like stealing the soul out of someone. I just borrowed them, that's
all. And I've kept the address of the owner, away up on the edge of the
Barrens. Some day we're going to make a special trip to take the books
home."

Peter, all at once, had become interested in something else, and
following the direction of his pointed nose Jolly Roger saw Nada
standing quietly on the opposite side of the stream, looking at them.
In a moment Peter knew her, and he was tr