the Royal Mounted were after him
farther north--and that he was not fit to love her, and that it was a
crime to let her love him. It was then the soul of the woman had come
to her in all its triumph. She had made her choice, definitely and
decisively, without hesitation and without fear. And now, as she stared
unseeingly at the window against which the rain was beating, the
woman in her girlish body rose in her mightier than in the hour of her
happiness, fighting to find a way--crying out for the man she loved.

Her mind swept back in a single flash through all the years she had
lived, through her years of unhappiness and torment as the foster-girl
of Jed Hawkins and his broken, beaten wife; through summers and winters
that had seemed ages to her, eternities of desolation, of heartache,
of loneliness, with the big wilderness her one friend on earth. As the
window rattled in a fresh blast of storm, she thought of the day months
ago when she had accidentally stumbled upon the hiding-place of Roger
McKay. Since that day he had been her God, and she had lived in a
paradise. He had been father, mother, brother, and at last--what she
most yearned for--a lover to her. And this day, when for the first time
he had held her in his arms, when the happiness of all the earth had
reached out to them, God had put it into Jed Hawkins' heart to destroy
her--and Jolly Roger had killed him!

With a sharp little cry she sprang to her feet, so suddenly that Peter
fell with a thump to the floor. He looked up at her, puzzled, his jaws
half agape. She was breathing quickly. Her slender body was quivering.
Suddenly Peter saw the fire in her eyes and the flame that was rushing
into her white cheeks. Then she turned to him, and panted in a wild
little whisper, so low that the Missioner could not hear:

"Peter, I was wrong. God wasn't wicked to let Mister Roger kill
Jed Hawkins. He oughta been killed. An' God meant him to be killed.
Peter--Peter--we don't care if he's an outlaw! We're goin' with him.
We're goin'--goin'--"

She sprang to the window, and Peter was at her heels as she strained at
it with all her strength, and he could hear her sobbing:

"We're goin' with him, Peter. We're goin'--if we die for it!"

An inch at a time she pried the window up. The storm beat in. A gust of
wind blew out the light, but in the last flare of it Nada saw a knife in
an Eskimo sheath hanging on the wall. She groped for it, and clutched it
in her hand as