after this, Yellow Bird had told
him to return to Nada as swiftly as he could, he would have believed,
and this night would have seen him on his way. But she had warned him
against this, predicting desolation and grief if he returned. She had
urged him to go on, somewhere, anywhere, seeking for an illusion and an
unreality which the spirits had named, to her as the Country Beyond.
And when he reached this Country Beyond, wherever it might be, he would
possess Nada again, and happiness for all time. After all, there was
something archaically crude in what he was trying to believe, when he
came to analyze it. Yellow Bird possessed her powers, but they were
definitely limited. And to believe beyond those limitations, to ride
upon the wings of superstition and imagination, was sheer savagery.

Jolly Roger stretched himself upon his blankets again, repeating this
final argument to himself. But as the night drew closer about him, and
his eyes closed, and sleep came, there was a lightness in his heart
which he had not known for many days. He dreamed, and his dream was of
Nada. He was with her again and it seemed, in this dream, that Yellow
Bird was always watching them, and they could not quite get away from
her. They ran through the jackpine openings where the strawberries and
blue violets grew, and he always ran behind Nada, so he could see her
brown curls flying about her.

But they never could rid themselves of Yellow Bird, no matter how fast
they ran or where they tried to hide. From somewhere Yellow Bird's
dark eyes would look out at them, and finally, laughing at his own
discomfiture, he drew Nada down beside him in a little fen, white and
yellow and blue with wildflowers, and boldly took her head in his arms
and kissed her--with Yellow Bird looking at them from behind a banksian
clump twenty feet away. So real was the kiss, and so real the warm
pressure of Nada's slim arms about his neck that he awoke with a glad
cry--and sat up to find the dawn had come.

For a few moments he sat stupidly, looking about him as if not quite
believing the unreality of it all. Then with Peter he went down to the
edge of the lake.

All that day Peter sensed a quiet change in his master. Jolly Roger did
not talk. He did not whistle or laugh, but moved quietly when he moved
at all, with a set, strange look in his face. He was making his last
big fight against the desire to return to Cragg's Ridge. Yellow Bird's
predictions, and her warn