ous spot, in spite of the Sahara-like heat of
the great pile. In the very heart of it two gigantic masses of rock had
put their shoulders together, like Gog and Magog, so that under their
ten thousand tons of weight was a crypt-like tunnel as high as a man's
head, into which the light and the glare of the sun never came.

Peter, now that he had grown accustomed to the deadness of it, liked
this change from Indian Tom's cabin. He liked his wallow of soft sand
during the day, and he liked still more the aloneness and the aloofness
of their ramparted stronghold when the cool of evening came. He did not,
of course, understand just what their escape from Cassidy had meant, but
instinct was shrewdly at work within him, and no wolf could have guarded
the place more carefully than he. And he had all creation in mind when
he guarded the rock-pile.

All but Nada. Many times he whimpered for her, just as the great call
for her was in Jolly Roger's own heart. And on this third afternoon, as
the hot July sun dipped half way to the western forests, both Peter and
his master were looking yearningly, and with the same thought, toward
the east, where over the back-bone of Cragg's Ridge Jed Hawkins' cabin
lay.

"We'll let her know tonight," Roger McKay said at last, with something
very slow and deliberate in his voice. "We'll take the chance--and let
her know."

Peter's bristling Airedale whiskers, standing out like a bunch of broom
splints about his face, quivered sympathetically, and he thumped his
tail in the sand. He was an artful hypocrite, was Peter, because he
always looked as if he understood, whether he did or not. And Jolly
Roger, staring at the gray rock-backs outside their tunnel door, went
on.

"We must play square with her, Pied-Bot, and it's a crime worse than
murder not to let her know the truth. If she wasn't a kid, Peter! But
she's that--just a kid--the sweetest, purest thing God A'mighty ever
made, and it isn't fair to live this lie any longer, no matter how we
love her. And we do love her, Peter."

Peter lay very quiet, watching the strange gray look that had settled in
Jolly Roger's face.

"I've got to tell her that I'm a damned highwayman," he added, in a
moment. "And she won't understand, Peter. She can't. But I'm going to
do it. I'm going to tell her--today. And then--I think we'll be hittin'
north pretty soon, Pied-Bot. If it wasn't for Jed Hawkins--" He rose up
out of the sand, his hands clenched.

"W