down in a broken heap--but he was facing
her, his bright eyes wide open and questing for her. Slowly Nada went
to him. Until now, when it was all over, she had not realized how
helplessly weak she was. Something was turning round and round in her
head, and she was so dizzy that the shore swam before her eyes, and it
seemed quite right to her that Peter should be alive--and not dead.
She was still in a foot of water when she fell on her knees and dragged
herself the rest of the way to him, and gathered him in her arms again,
close up against her wet, choking breast.

And there the sun shone down upon them, without the shade of a twig
overhead; and the water that a little while before had sung of death
rippled with its old musical joy, and about them the birds sang, and
very near to them a pair of mating red-squirrels chattered and played in
a mountain-ash tree. And Nada's hair brightened in the sun, and began
to ripple into curls at the end, and Peter's bristling whiskers grew
dry--so that half an hour after she had dragged herself out of the water
there was a new light in the girl's eyes, and a color in her cheeks that
was like the first dawning of summer pink in the heart of a rose.

"We're a'most dry enough to go to Mister Jolly Roger, Peter," she
whispered, a little thrill in her voice.

She stood up, and shook out her half dry hair, and then picked up
Peter--and winced when he gave a little moan.

"He'll fix you, Peter," she comforted. "An' it'll be so nice over
here--with him."

Her eyes were looking ahead, down through the glory of the sun-filled
forest, and the song of birds and the beauty of the world filled her
soul, and a new and wonderful freedom seemed to thrill in the touch of
the soft earth under her feet.

"Flowers," she cried softly. "Flowers, an' birds, an' the sun, Peter--"
She paused a moment, as if listening to the throb of light and life
about her. And then, "I guess we'll go to Mister Jolly Roger now," she
said.

She shook her hair again, so that it shone in a soft and rebellious
glory about her, and the violet light grew a little darker in her eyes,
and the color a bit deeper in her cheeks as she walked on into the
forest over the faintly worn foot-trail that led to the old cabin where
Jolly Roger was keeping himself away from the eyes of men.

CHAPTER III

From the little old cabin of dead Indian Tom, built in a grassy glade
close to the shore of Sucker Creek, came the sound of a