f
the other room he saw Jolly Roger McKay open wide his arms, and the girl
go into them. After that the storm broke. The rain descended in a deluge
upon the cabin roof. The black night was filled with the rumble and roar
and the hissing lightning-flare of pent-up elements suddenly freed of
bondage. And in the darkness and tumult the Missioner stood, a little
gray man of tragedy, of deeply buried secrets, a man of prayer and of
faith in God--his heart whispering for guidance and mercy as he waited.
The minutes passed. Five. Ten. And then there came a louder roaring of
the storm, shut off quickly, and the little Missioner knew that a door
was opened--and closed.

He lifted the latch, and looked out again into the lampglow. Huddled
at the side of a chair on the floor, her arms and face buried in the
lustrous, disheveled mass of her shining hair--lay Nada, and close
beside her was Peter. He went to her. Tenderly he knelt down beside her.
His thin arm went about her, and as the storm raved and shrieked above
them he tried to comfort her--and spoke of God.

And through that storm, his head bowed, his heart gone, went Jolly Roger
McKay--heading north.

CHAPTER VIII

Peter, thrust back from the door through which through which his master
had gone, listened vainly for the sound of returning footsteps in the
beat of rain and the crash of thunder outside. A strange thing had
burned itself into his soul, a thing that made his flesh quiver and set
hot fires running in his blood. As a dog sometimes senses the stealthy
approach of death, so he began to sense the tragedy of this night that
had brought with it not only a chaos of blackness and storm, but an
anguish which roused an answering whimper in his throat as he turned
toward Nada.

She was crumpled with her head in her arms, where she had flung herself
with Jolly Roger's last kiss of worship on her lips, and she was sobbing
like a child with its heart broken. And beside her knelt the old gray
Missioner, man of God in the deep forest, who stroked her hair with his
thin hand, whispering courage and consolation to her, with the wind and
rain beating overhead and the windows rattling to the accompaniment of
ghostly voices that shrieked and wailed in the tree-tops outside.

Peter trembled at the sobbing, but his heart and his desire were with
the man who had gone. In his unreasoning little soul it was Jed Hawkins
who was rattling the windows with his unseen hands and who