awn that Peter dragged
himself up the rough side of a ridge and looked down into a narrow strip
of plain on the other side. Just as Nada had given up in weakness and
despair, so now he was almost ready to quit. He had traveled miles since
the owl fight, and his wounds had stiffened, and with every step gave
him excruciating pain. His injured eye was entirely closed, and there
was a strange, dull ache in the back of his head, where Gargantua had
pounded him with his beak. The strip of valley, half hidden in its
silvery mist of dawn, seemed a long distance away to Peter, and he
dropped on his belly and began to lick his raw shoulder with a feverish
tongue. He was sick and tired, and the futility of going farther
oppressed him. He looked again down into the strip of plain, and whined.

Then, suddenly, he smelled something that was not the musty fog-mist
that hung between the ridges. It was smoke. Peter's heart beat faster,
and he pulled himself to his feet, and went in its direction.

Hidden in a little grassy cup between two great boulders that thrust
themselves out from the face of the ridge, he found Jolly Roger. First
he saw the smouldering embers of a fire that was almost out--and then
his master. Jolly Roger was asleep. Storm-beaten and strangely haggard
and gray his face was turned to the sky. Peter did not awaken him. There
was something in his master's face that quieted the low whimper in his
throat. Very gently he crept to him, and lay down. The movement, slight
as it was, made the man stir. His hand rose, and then fell limply across
Peter's body. But the fingers moved.

Unconsciously, as if guided by the spirit and prayer of the girl waiting
far back in the forest, they twined about the cloth around Peter's
neck--his message to his master.

And for a long time after that, as the sun rose over a wonderful world,
Peter and his master slept.

CHAPTER IX

It was the restlessness of Peter that roused Jolly Roger. Half awake,
and before he opened his eyes, life seized upon him where sleep had cut
it off for a time last night. His muscles ached. His neck was stiff. He
seemed weighted like a log to the hard earth. Swiftly the experience
of the preceding hours rushed upon him, and it was in the first of this
wakefulness that he felt the presence of Peter.

He sat up and stared wide-eyed at the dog. The fact that Peter had
escaped from the cabin, and had followed him, was not altogether
amazing. It was quite