He
opened the door and a damp chill touched his face. The cabin was empty.
And the gloom and desolation of a grave filled the place.

He stepped in, a moaning whisper of the truth coming to his lips. He
heard the scurrying flight of a starved wood-rat, a flutter of loose
papers, and then the silence of death fell about him. The door of Nada's
little room was open and he entered through it. The bed was naked and
there remained only the skeleton of things that had been.

He moved now like a man numbed by a strange sickness and Peter followed
gloomily and silently in the footsteps of his master. They went outside
and a distance away Jolly Roger saw a thing rising up out of the char of
fire, ugly and foreboding, like the evil spirit of desolation itself. It
was a rude cross made of saplings, up which the flames had licked their
way, searing it grim and black.

His hands clenched slowly for he knew that under the cross lay the body
of Jed Hawkins, the fiend who had destroyed his world.

After that he re-entered the cabin and went into Nada's room, closing
the door behind him; and for many minutes thereafter Peter remained
outside guarding the outer door, and hearing no sound or movement from
within.

When Jolly Roger came out his face was set and white, and he looked
where the thick forest had stood on that stormy night when he ran down
the trail toward Mooney's cabin. There was no forest now. But he found
the old tie-cutters' road, cluttered as it was with the debris of fire,
and he knew when he came to that twist in the trail where long ago Jed
Hawkins had lain dead on his back. Half a mile beyond he came to the
railroad. Here it was that the fire had burned hottest, for as far as
his vision went he could see no sign of life or of forest green alight
in the waning sun.

And now there fell upon him, along with the desolation of despair, a
something grimmer and more terrible--a thing that was fear. About him
everywhere reached this graveyard of death, leaving no spot untouched.
Was it possible that Nada and the Missioner had not escaped its fury?
The fear settled upon him more heavily as the sun went down and the
gloom of evening came, bringing with it an unpleasant chill and a
cloying odor of things burned dead.

He did not talk to Peter now. There was a lamp in the cabin and wood
behind the stove, and silently he built a fire and trimmed and lighted
the wick when darkness came. And Peter, as if hiding from the gho