hter than last night,
lighting his way between the two walls of the forest.

CHAPTER XXIII

Dawn came softly where the quiet waters of the Willow Bud ran under deep
forests of evergreen out into the gold and silver birch of the Nelson
River flats. A veiling mist rose out of the earth to meet the promise
of day, gentle and sweet, like scented raiment, stirring sleepily to the
pulse of an awakening earth. Through it came the first low twitter of
birdsong, a sound that seemed to swell and grow until it filled the
world. Yet was it still a sound of sleep, of half wakefulness, and the
mist was thinning away when, a ruffled little breast sent out its full
throat-song from the tip of a silver birch that overhung the stream.

The little warbler was looking down, as if wondering why there was no
stir of life beneath him, where in last night's sunset there had been
much to wonder at and a new kind of song to thrill him. But the girl
was no longer there to sing back at him. The cedar and balsam shelter
dripped with morning dew, the place where fire had been was black
and dead, and ruffling his feathers the warbler continued his song in
triumph.

Nada, hidden under her shelter, and still half dreaming, heard him. She
lay with her head nestled in the crook of Roger's arm, and the birdsong
seemed to come to her from a great distance away. She smiled, and her
lips trembled, as if even in sleep she--was about to answer it. And then
the song drifted away until she could no longer hear it, and she sank
back into an oblivion of darkness in which she seemed lost for a long
time, and out of which some invisible force was struggling to drag her.

There came at last a sudden irresistible pull at her senses, and she
opened her eyes, awake. Her head was no longer in the crook of Jolly
Roger's arm. She could see him sitting up straight, and he was not
looking at her. It must be late, she thought, for the light was strong
in his face, warm with the first golden flow of the sun. She smiled, and
sat up, and shook her soft curls with a happy little laugh.

"Roger--"

And then she, too, was staring, wide-eyed and speechless. For she saw
Peter under Jolly Roger's hand. But it was not Peter who drew her breath
short and sent fear cutting like a sharp knife through her heart.

Facing them, seated coldly on a log which McKay had dragged in from the
timber, was a thin-faced sharp-eyed man who was studying them with an
odd smile on his lips,