He straightened his shoulders, as if to give himself confidence and
strength, and then he called Peter, and comforted the dog whose master
and mistress were fleeing through the dark.

"They have reached the pool," he said, seating himself and holding
Peter's shaggy head between his hands. "They have just about reached the
pool, and Breault must be entering the clearing on the other side. Roger
cannot miss the canoe--twenty paces down and with nothing to shadow
it overhead; I think he has found it by this time, and in another half
minute they will be off. And it is very black down the Burntwood, with
deep timber close to the water, and for many miles no man can follow by
night along its shores." Suddenly his hands tightened, and the Leaf Bud,
watching him slyly, saw the last of suspense go out of his face.
"And now--they are safe," he cried exultantly. "They must be on their
way--and Breault has not come across the clearing!"

He rose to his feet, and began pacing back and forth, while Peter
sniffed yearningly at the door again. Oosimisk, with the caution of her
race in moments of danger, was drawing the curtains at the windows,
and Father John smiled his approbation. He did not want Breault, the
man-hunter, peering through one of the windows at him. Even as he walked
back and forth he listened intently for Breault's footsteps. Peter, with
a sigh, gave up his scratching and settled himself on his haunches close
to Nada's door.

Father John, in passing him, paused to lay a hand on his head.

"Some day it may please God to let us go to them," he consoled, speaking
for himself even more than for Peter. "Some day, when they are far
away--and safe."

He felt Peter suddenly stiffen under his hand, and from the Leaf Bud
came a low, swift word of warning.

She began singing softly, and dishes and pans already clean rattled
under her hands in the kitchen, and she continued to sing even as the
cabin door opened and Breault the man-hunter stood in it.

The unexpectedness of his appearance, without the sound of a warning
footstep outside, was amazing even to Peter. In the open door he stood
for a moment, his thin, ferret-like face standing out against the black
background of the night, and his strange eyes, apparently half closed
yet bright as diamonds, sweeping the interior without effort but with
the quickness of lightning.

There was something deadly and foreboding about him as he stood here,
and Peter growled low in h