p he had
lost during the night. The storm was dying out, he thought, and it was
growing warmer; yet the wind whistled and raved in the open spaces and
his thermometer registered the fortieth and a fraction degree below
zero. The air he breathed was softer, he fancied, yet it was still heavy
with the stinging shot of blizzard; and where yesterday he had seen
only the smothering chaos of twisted spruce and piled up snow, there
was now--as the pale day broadened--his old wonderland of savage beauty,
awaiting only a flash of sunlight to transform it into the pure glory of
a thing indescribable. But the sun did not come and Jolly Roger did not
miss it over-much for his heart was full of Nada, and a-thrill with the
inspiration of his home-going.

"That's what it means, GOING HOME" he said to Peter, who nosed close
in the path of his snowshoes. "There's a thousand miles between us and
Cragg's Ridge, a thousand miles of snow and ice--and hell, mebby. But
we'll make it!"

He was sure of himself now. It was as if he had come up from out of the
shadow of a great sickness. He had been unwise. He had not reasoned as
a man should reason. The hangman might be waiting for him at Cragg's
Ridge, down on the rim of civilization, but that same grim executioner
was also pursuing close at his heels. He would always be pursuing in the
form of a Breault, a Cassidy, a Tavish, or a Somebody Else of the Royal
Northwest Mounted Police. It would be that way until the end came. And
when the end did come, when they finally got him, the blow would be
easier at Cragg's Ridge than up here on the edge of the Barren Land.

And again there was hope, a wild, almost unbelievable hope that with
Nada he might find that place which Yellow Bird, the sorceress, had
promised for them--that mystery-place of safety and of happiness which
she had called The Country Beyond, where "all would end well." He had
not the faith of Yellow Bird's people; he was not superstitious enough
to believe fully in her sorcery, except that he seized upon it as
a drowning man might grip at a floating sea-weed. Yet was the
under-current of hope so persistent that at times it was near faith.
Up to this hour Yellow Bird's sorcery had brought him nothing but the
truth. For him she had conjured the spirits of her people, and these
spirits, speaking through Yellow Bird's lips, had saved him from Cassidy
at the fishing camp and had performed the miracle on the shore of
Wollaston and had pre