nyone just now."

The young man's fingers touched his arm again.

"I understand," he said, "and I hope to God you'll find her."

Silently they shook hands, and Jolly Roger hurried away from the cabin
with the rising spiral of smoke.

Three days later a man and a dog came from the burned country into
the town of Fort William, seeking for a wandering messenger of God who
called himself Father John, and a young and beautiful girl whose name
was Nada Hawkins. He stopped first at the old mission, in whose shadow
the Indians and traders of a century before had bartered their wares,
and Father Augustine, the aged patriarch who talked with him, murmured
as he went that he was a strange man, and a sick one, with a little
madness lurking in his eyes.

And it was, in fact, a madness of despair eating out the life in Jolly
Roger's heart. For he no longer had hope Nada had escaped the fire, even
though at no place had he found a conclusive evidence of her death. But
that signified little, for there were many of the missing who had not
been found between the last of September and these days of May. What
he did find, with deadly regularity, was the fact that Father John had
escaped--and that he had traveled to safety ALONE.

And Father Augustine told him that when Father John stopped to rest
for a few days at the Mission he was heading north, for somewhere on
Pashkokogon Lake near the river Albany.

There was little rest for Peter and his master at Fort William town.
That Breault must be close on their trail, and following it with the
merciless determination of the ferret from which he had been named,
there was no shadow of doubt in the mind of Jolly Roger McKay. So after
outfitting his pack at a little corner shop, where Breault would be slow
to enquire about him, he struck north through the bush toward Dog Lake
and the river of the same name. Five or six days, he thought, would
bring him to Father John and the truth which he dreaded more and more to
hear.

The despondency of his master had sunk, in some mysterious way, into
the soul of Peter. Without the understanding of language he sensed the
oppressive gloom of tragedy behind and about him and there was a wolfish
slinking in the manner of his travel now, and his confidence was going
as he caught the disease of despair of the man who traveled with him.
But constantly and vigilantly his eyes and scent were questing about
them, suspicious of the very winds that whispered in