ugh the gloom ahead.

The trail had dipped, and she felt the deepening slush of swamp-mire
under her feet. She sank in it to her shoe-tops, and stumbled into pools
knee-deep, and Peter wallowed in it to his belly. A quarter of an hour
they fought through it to the rising ground beyond. And by that time the
last of the black storm clouds had passed overhead. The rain had ceased.
The rumble of thunder came more faintly. There was no lightning, and the
tree-tops began to whisper softly, as if rejoicing in the passing of the
wind. About them--everywhere--they could hear the run and drip of water,
the weeping of the drenched trees, the gurgle of flooded pools, and the
trickle of tiny rivulets that splashed about their feet. Through a rift
in the breaking clouds overhead came a passing flash of the moon.

"We'll find him now, Peter," moaned the girl. "We'll find him--now. He
can't be very far ahead--"

And Peter waited, holding his breath, listening for an answer to the cry
that went out for Jolly Roger McKay.

The glory of July midnight, with a round, full moon straight overhead,
followed the stress of storm. The world had been lashed and inundated,
every tree whipped of its rot and slag, every blade of grass and flower
washed clean. Out of the earth rose sweet smells of growing life, the
musky fragrance of deep moss and needle-mold, and through the clean air
drifted faintly the aroma of cedar and balsam and the subtle tang of
unending canopies and glistening tapestries of evergreen breathing into
the night. The deep forest seemed to tremble with the presence of an
invisible and mysterious life--life that was still, yet wide-awake,
breathing, watchful, drinking in the rejuvenating tonic of the air which
had so quietly followed thunder and lightning and the roar of wind and
rain. And the moon, like a queen who had so ordered these things,
looked down in a mighty triumph. Her radiance, without dust or fog or
forest-smoke to impede its way, was like the mellow glow of half-day. It
streamed through the treetops in paths of gold and silver, throwing dark
shadows where it failed to penetrate, and gathering in wide pools where
its floods poured through broad rifts in the roofs of the forest.
And the trail, leading north, was like a river of shimmering silver,
splitting the wilderness from earth to sky.

In this trail, clearly made in the wet soil, were Jolly Roger's
foot-prints, and in a wider space, where at some time a trappe