e to have a man like you for a brother. And Peter loves
you. And I--"

The color came into her white face.

"I'm goin' with you and Peter," she finished.

Something came to relieve the tenseness of the moment for Jolly Roger.
Peter, nosing in a thick patch of bunch-grass, put out a huge snowshoe
rabbit, and the two crashed in a startling avalanche through the young
jackpines, Peter's still puppyish voice yelling in a high staccato as he
pursued. Jolly Roger turned from Nada, and stared where they had gone.
But he was seeing nothing. He knew the hour of his mightiest fight had
come. In the reckless years of his adventuring he had more than once
faced death. He had starved. He had frozen. He had run the deadliest
gantlets of the elements, of beast, and of man. Yet was the strife in
him now the greatest of all his life. His heart thumped. His brain was
swirling in a vague and chaotic struggle for the mastery of things, and
as he fought with himself--his unseeing eyes fixed on the spot where
Peter and the snowshoe rabbit had disappeared--he heard Nada's voice
behind him, saying again that she was going with him and Peter. In those
seconds he felt himself giving way, and the determined action he
had built up for himself began to crumble like sand. He had made his
confession and in spite of it this young girl he worshipped--sweeter and
purer than the flowers of the forest--was urging herself upon him! And
his soul cried out for him to turn about, and open his arms to her, and
gather her into them for as long as God saw fit to give him freedom and
life.

But still he fought against that mighty urge, dragging reason and right
back fragment by fragment, while Nada stood behind him, her wide-open,
childishly beautiful eyes beginning to comprehend the struggle that was
disrupting the heart of this man who was an outlaw--and her god among
men. And when Jolly Roger turned, his face had aged to the grayness of
stone, and his eyes were dull, and there was a terribly dead note in his
voice.

"You can't go with us," he said. "You can't. It's wrong--all wrong. I
couldn't take care of you in jail, and some day--that's where I'll be."

More than once when she had spoken of Jed Hawkins he had seen the swift
flash of lightning come into the violet of her eyes. And it came now,
and her little hands grew tight at her sides, and bright spots burned in
her cheeks.

"You won't!" she cried. "I won't let you go to jail. I'll fight for
you-