sound in the soft white sands of Wollaston.

And as she sought, the clouds thinned out above, and the stars shone
through more clearly, as if to make easier for her the quest in the
gloom.

Where he had made his bed of blankets in the sand, close beside a flat
mass of water-washed sandstone, Jolly Roger lay half asleep. Peter was
wide awake. His eyes gleamed brightly and watchfully. His lank and bony
body was tense and alert. He did not whine or snap his jaws, though
he heard the Indian dogs occasionally doing so. The comradeship of a
fugitive, ever on the watch for his fellow men, had made him silent and
velvet-footed, and had sharpened his senses to the keenness of knives.
He, too, felt the impelling force of an approaching menace in this night
of stillness and mystery, and he watched closely the restless movements
of his master's body, and listened with burning eyes to the name which
he had spoken three times in the last five minutes of his sleep.

It was Nada's name, and as Jolly Roger cried it out softly in the old
way, as if Nada was standing before them, he reached out, and his hands
struck the sandstone rock. His eyes opened, and slowly he sat up.
The sky had cleared of clouds, and there was starlight, and in that
starlight Jolly Roger saw a figure standing near him in the sand. At
first he thought it was Sun Cloud, for Peter stood with his head raised
to her. Then he saw it was Yellow Bird, with her beautiful eyes looking
at him steadily and strangely as he awakened.

He got upon his feet and went to her, and took one of her hands. It was
cold. He felt the shiver that ran through her slim body, and suddenly
her eyes swept from him out into the night.

"Listen, Neekewa!"

Her fingers tightened in his hand. For a space he could hear the beating
of her heart.

"Twice I have heard it," she whispered then. "Neekewa, you must go!"

"Heard what?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Something--I don't know what. But it tells me there is danger. And I
saw danger over the tepee top, and I have heard whisperings of it all
about me. It is coming. It is coming slowly and cautiously. It is very
near. Hark, Neekewa! Was that not a sound out on the water?"

"I think it was the wing of a duck, Yellow Bird."

"And THAT!" she cried swiftly, her fingers tightening still more. "That
sound--as if wood strikes on wood!"

"The croak of a loon far up the shore, Yellow Bird."

She drew her hand away.

"Neekewa, listen