his thin lips and his cynically lined face seldom betrayed
the better thoughts within him, if he possessed any at all. In the
Service he was regarded as a humanly perfect mechanism, a bit of
machinery that never failed, the dreaded Nemesis to be set on the trail
of a wrong-doer when all others had failed.

But this morning, with every bone and muscle in him aching from his long
night of tedious exertion, the chuckle grew into a laugh as he looked
upon the telltale signs in the sand.

He stretched himself and his tired bones cracked.

Breault did not think aloud. But he was saying to himself.

"There, against that rock, Jolly Roger McKay sat There is the imprint of
only one person sitting. The girl was in his arms. Here are little holes
where her outstretched heels rested in the sand. She is wearing shoes
and not moccasins."

He grinned as he drew his service pack from the two-log cedar raft.

"Plenty of time now," he continued to think. "They are mine this
time--sure. They believe they have fooled me, and they haven't. That's
fatal. Always."

Not infrequently, when entirely alone, Breault let a little part of
himself loose, as if freeing a prisoner from bondage for a short time.
For instance, he whistled. It was not an unpleasant whistle, but rather
oddly reminiscent of tender things he remembered away back somewhere;
and as he fried his bacon and steamed a handful of desiccated potatoes
he hummed a song, also rather pleasant to ears that were as closely
attentive as Peter's.

For Peter had crept up through a tangle of ground-scrub and lay not
twenty paces away, smelling of the bacon hungrily, and watching intently
from his concealment.

Peter knew the fox and the wolf, but he did not know Breault, and he
did not guess why the man's whistling grew a little louder, nor why his
humming voice grew stronger. But after a time, with his back and not his
face toward Peter, Breault called in the most natural and matter-of-fact
voice in the world,

"Come on, Peter. Breakfast is ready!"

Peter's jaws dropped in amazement. And as Breault turned toward him, his
thin face a-grin, and continued to invite him in a most companionable
way, he forgot his concealment entirely and stood up straight, ready
either to fight or fly.

Breault tossed him a dripping slice of bacon which he held in his hand.
It fell within a foot of Peter's nose, and Peter was ravenously hungry.
The delicious odor of it demoralized his senses and hi