on his face and he shivered. The thought came to him that the girl
was afraid of him and was running away. As she disappeared among the
banksians he reached for one of the raw carrots and began to eat it.

Mona returned so quietly that he did not hear her until she was at
his side. She brought a basket and a small pail of cold spring-water.
She spread a napkin on his lap and loaded it with the contents of the
basket. He was sensitively conscious of her eyes upon him and he tried
not to appear ravenous as he began with meat and bread.

"I'm spoiling your picnic, child," he said, speaking to her feebly like
a man who was very old. "I'm sorry."

"You're not spoiling it," she cried, leaning toward him with a gesture
full of sweet tenderness. "Oh, I have been so happy today--God has made
me happier by bringing me here in time to help you!"

"Happy," he whispered, as if to himself. "It is wonderful to be happy.
I have known--what it is."

It was her struggle to appear natural now as he ate. She had never been
so intimately close to starvation and pathos and weakness in man.

"Were you lost?" she asked.

He caught quickly at her suggestion. "Yes, lost--in the woods and the
swamps between the railroad and here. I was trying to find a place
called Five Fingers."

She gave a little exclamation. "I'm from Five Fingers. It is not far.
Uncle Pierre calls it a mile and a half."

Mona wondered at the strange silence which came over the man, and the
suddenness with which his hunger seemed to be satisfied.

"You have been an angel to me," he said, when he had finished.
"And--things love you. Even the wild creatures." He was looking at the
baby beavers, humped into furry balls at the edge of the pond. "You
called one of them Peterkin, and the old beaver Peter. I wonder--why?"

"And there is a bear cub I call Pete," she added. "It is because--"

"Yes----"

Her eyes were shining.

"Because I am going to marry a man whose name is Peter."

It did not seem strange to her that she should be confessing the secret
of her happiness to a man she had never seen before.

There was something in his eyes which made her want him to know, a
mysterious gentleness that seemed to plead for her confidence and her
friendship. It gave her a pleasurable thrill to tell someone that she
loved Peter and was going to be his wife. And this man was unlike any
other who had ever come from the outside world into the wilderness
isolation of Five Fingers.

In his rags and misfortune and his whitening hair and pale, thin face,
she saw something which stirred more than her pity. And it was more
than faith.

Just what it was, in that moment, she did not know. She was puzzled by
the tremor which ran through his body coincident with her mention of
Peter.

"And this Peter----" he began feverishly. The words seemed to choke in
his throat, and he passed a hand over his eyes as if to wipe away a
mist. Then he said: "He is a lucky lad. Is his name Peter McRae?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"And--you love him?"

She nodded. "I was only thirteen then, but I loved him the first day he
came to Five Fingers and fought Aleck Curry for me. Aleck was a bully
and was pulling my hair."

The mysterious stranger bent his gray head so that she could not
see his face. "That was six years ago last May, in the afternoon.
And--Peter--did he ever tell you about--his father?"

"Yes, that same night. It was in the edge of the forest, and it
was growing dark. He had brought a letter from his father to Simon
McQuarrie, and Simon had told him the truth. He said his father had
killed a man--accidentally--a long time ago, but that the police
wouldn't believe it was an accident and were after him, and would hang
him if he was caught. And ever since then----"

She was at his side, staring at him as he slowly raised his head,
the color gone from her face and her white throat beating with the
sudden mad pounding in her breast. "Ever since that night--that very
hour--we have prayed together for Peter's father to come back. And
you--_you_----"

He could not escape the wild questioning in her eyes and their demand
to be answered.

"Would you have _me_ Peter's father?" he asked uncertainly. "This
way--an outlaw--ragged--dirty--a beggar----"

There was an almost tragic note of hopefulness in his voice.

"Yes," she cried, her voice breaking in excited entreaty from her lips.
"If you are Peter's father, tell me. We have waited. And I have told
him you would come. Oh, I have _promised_ him that, and have asked God
every night to make it come true. Are you----" Her hands were reaching
out to him.

"Yes, I am Peter's father."

There was no flash of joy or pride in his acknowledgment of the truth.
His head sank upon his breast as if a sudden weariness had overcome
him, and a moan of protest was in his voice. And then a thing happened
which swept the bitterness and grief from Donald McRae's heart. He
caught a glimpse of Mona's face, gloriously flushed in this moment of
her answered prayer; and then her arms were about him, her soft cheek
against his rough stubble of beard, and for an instant he felt the
swift pressure of her lips against his.

He raised his hand and touched her hair. "Child," he cried brokenly,
"dear child----"

She sprang up from him, half laughing and half sobbing, and ran out
from under the mountain ash tree and stood in the edge of the clearing.
With her hands in the form of a megaphone she called: "Peter! Peter!
_Oh, Peter!_"

With a protesting cry he climbed to his feet and went to her. She saw
the white, almost frightened look in his face and eyes. "Don't do
that!" he exclaimed. "For God's sake--don't! Peter must not know I am
here."

In her amazement her hands fell slowly from her face to her side.
"Why?" she demanded.

"Because----" He stopped, listening to a voice that came faintly from
out of the forest.

"That is Peter," said Mona. "We are going to eat our picnic supper
here--at the pool."

"It is Peter--_coming_----"

"Yes."

He tried to breathe steadily, tried to speak calmly as he took her hand
and stroked it with nervous gentleness. "What is your name?"

"Mona Guyon."

"Mona--Guyon. It is a pretty name. And you are sweet and good and
beautiful. Peter's mother was like you. And--I am glad you love my
boy." A new strength seemed to possess him.

The voice came again out of the forest, a little nearer this time, and
Donald McRae held the girl's hand closer, and a tremor went through him
as he smiled at her in the way he used to smile at his boy in the old
days of their comradeship and happiness.

"That is my call," he said evenly. "Peter's mother and I used it twenty
years ago, and afterward I taught it to Peter. It carries a long
distance in the woods."

It was not his poverty and his weakness that affected Mona most.
Something more than pity overwhelmed her--his forced calmness, the
strange light in his eyes, the almost superhuman fight he was making to
rise up out of his rags and his misery in the most tragic hours that
could have come into his life. His words and his appearance set her
heart pounding fiercely. She was a little frightened and wanted to put
her arms about him again and hold him until Peter came. What did he
mean?

"Why mustn't Peter know you are here?" she demanded. "_Why?_"

He led her back in the willows. In a moment they were hidden.

"Are you brave enough to hear? And do you love Peter enough to
help--me?" he asked her.

"Yes, yes, I will help you."

He stood so that he could look out of the willows and across the meadow
through which Peter would come. A moment of despair and hopelessness
twisted the muscles of his face.

"He must not see me," he said in a voice that was hardly more than a
strained whisper. "Child, you must understand--you most of all. Don't
you know why I ran away from Peter that day near Five Fingers, and sent
him on to Simon McQuarrie? It was so Peter might have a chance in life
that he never could have with me, even if I escaped the law. I, too,
have prayed--every day and every night through the years that have been
more than eternities for me; prayed that good and happiness might come
to him, and that in time even the memory of his father would wear away.
But never for an instant have I been able to forget my boy. He has been
a part of my soul and body, walking with me, sleeping with me, sitting
with me beside my hidden camp-fires at night, until at times the desire
to see him once more was so strong in me that it almost drove me mad.
And all this time I was hunted, running from place to place, living in
swamps and hidden depths of the forests, avoiding men and places of
habitation--but with Peter always at my side, just as he looked that
last terrible day at the edge of Five Fingers when he pleaded with me
to take him along----"

His lips trembled and a shiver ran through his body.

"And through those years Peter _was_ with you--Peter and I," replied
the girl. "Summer nights we used to ask the moon where you were, and
when it was cold and stormy we--we prayed. And on Christmas--Peter
always got a present--for _you_."

A joyous light passed over his haggard face. "You thought of me--on
Christmas?"

"Yes, always. And Peter asked me to keep the presents carefully in my
cedar chest, for we knew you would come back some day. And now----"

It was Peter's voice that came to them again, much nearer. Donald's
arms fell away from the girl, but she raised her face quickly and
kissed him. Her eyes were filled with tears.

"Peter is wondering why I do not answer. Please--please----"

In his indecision he bowed his face in his hands. It was with an effort
that he shook himself free of temptation.

"I must tell you quickly, and you must understand," he said
desperately. "The police are close after me again. That is why I was
in the great swamp to the north--to get away from them. If I come back
into Peter's life now it can only be for a few hours, and you know what
it will mean--a fresh tragedy for him, a new grief, pain, disgrace, a
black cloud of unhappiness over the paradise which you have made and
can make for him. I have come back to see him, to look at him, to carry
away a new picture of him in my heart. But he must not know. And if
you love Peter--if you care a little for what is in the heart of his
father--you will make it possible for me to look upon my boy. I will
hide here, in the willows; and you two, there under the ash tree----"

"It is wrong," broke in Mona. "Oh, it is terribly wrong!"

"No, it is right," he persisted. "It will make me happy--to see him so
near to me, hear his voice and know that life and God and _you_ have
been good to him. If I see Peter, child, if his hands touch me, if we
are together again--it may cost me my life. For those things would hold
me; I could not go away again after that, and the police are near, very
near, and if they should catch me----"

The sag that came into his shoulders gave eloquence to the thing which
he did not finish, and Mona's eyes burned with a fire which dried up
her tears. "If I bring Peter down there, under the tree, will you
promise not to go away until I have seen you again?" she asked.

"Yes, I promise that."

"Even if it is tomorrow, or the next day?"

"I will wait."

It was hard for him to lie, looking into the beautiful eyes that were
fixed upon him so steadily. But he did it splendidly; so well that Mona
did not guess the falsehood back of his last great fight.

She turned from him swiftly with her face toward the meadow.

"I will bring Peter--down there," she said.

She ran to the mountain ash tree and in a few breathless seconds
rearranged the luncheon basket and tossed half eaten bits of food into
the pond. Then she hurried across the meadow. Peter's call came to her
again, and this time she answered it. In the deep shade on the farther
side of the meadow she stopped and pressed her hands to her face. Her
cheeks were hot. She was fighting against a sense of overwhelming
guilt, for in this hour, this very minute, she knew she was not only
betraying Peter, but committing the sacrilege of repudiating answered
prayer. And Peter must not know!

He could not fail to see her excitement, unless--she laughed softly as
the old, sweet thought came to her. Peter loved her hair. He loved to
see it down, as on that first day six years ago when he came upon her
in the edge of the forest near Five Fingers. She paused again, and her
fingers worked swiftly among its lustrous coils until they fell about
her. Peter would guess nothing now--when she came to him like this, in
a way that shut his eyes to all the rest of the world.

She could hear him coming through the brush. He was running, and she
guessed at the alarm which was urging him because she had failed to
answer his calls until that last time, when she knew her voice had not
sent forth the old cry in just the way it should have greeted Peter.

She stood very still, so that when Peter leaped over a fallen tree not
twenty paces away from her he did not see her. He stopped, his head
thrown back, breathing quickly, and listening; and in this moment Mona
recalled the other day of years ago when he came into the cutting near
Five Fingers and found her struggling with Aleck Curry, the bully of
the settlement.

He was the same Peter, only now he was a man. His hair had not darkened
and his eyes were the same blue. He was the clean-cut, fearless,
sensitive Peter who had gone into battle for her against a boy nearly
twice his weight and years older. The years had given a splendid change
to his body. He was still slim, like the old Peter, and there was a
litheness and alertness in him which filled her with pride. She held
her breath, watching him, and exulted when she saw the anxiety in his
face. Then he called again, and in the moment of silence which followed
she suddenly clapped her hands and laughed.

Peter turned in amazement, and when he saw her standing as she was,
with her long hair streaming about her, he drew in a deep breath, and
the blood surged into his tense face as he came to her. The happiness
which swept his anxiety away brought a responsive glow of joy into her
eyes, and as she held out her arms to him she forgot for a moment the
man hidden among the willows near the mountain ash tree. For a little
while Peter held her so close she could feel the thumping of his heart,
and not until he had kissed her hair and her lips did he seem to have
breath to ask why she had not answered his calls.

"To punish you for making me wait so long at the pond," she said.
"But"--she raised a soft tress to his lips--"I was sorry, at the last
moment, and did _this_ for you, Peter. Will you forgive me?"

She was thinking of Donald McRae again, and slipping her hand into
Peter's, she led him toward the pond. And Peter, in the sweetness and
joy of her presence, guessed nothing because her fingers tightened in
his hand or because her breath came more quickly than usual.

They drew nearer to the ash tree and the willows. She knew that Donald
McRae was now looking upon the face of his boy; she could see the clump
of twisted bushes behind which he was hidden, and caught a movement in
their tops, as if an animal or a breath of wind had disturbed them.

They were under the ash tree when she flung back her hair, no longer
making an effort to hide from Peter the distress in her face. He was
shocked, even a little terrified at her appearance. Involuntarily her
glance went beyond him to the thicket which concealed Donald McRae. It
was only a few steps away, and she knew Peter's father could distinctly
hear what they said. Then she looked at Peter again, and smiled gently
at his suspense as she raised one of his hands to her lips in the soft
caress that always wiped away his troubles. And in that same moment she
drew him a step nearer to the willows.

"Something happened before you came," she said, speaking so that Donald
McRae would not lose a word of what she was saying. "I think I must
have had a--a--dream--and it was terrible!" She shuddered, and listened
to the breaking of a twig in the willows. "I am foolish to let it
frighten me."

His arms were about her, his fingers smoothing back her shining hair as
relief leaped into his face.

"You were asleep, _Ange_--with me bursting my throat to make you hear
from the forest?"

She did not answer his question. Instead, she said: "Peter, you have
not lied to me? You believe in prayer?"

He bent his lips to her white forehead. "Yes, _Ange_, and yours most of
all. God has answered you, and always will."

"And we have prayed a long time for your father to come back?"

He nodded wonderingly. "Yes, a long time."

She spoke slowly then, and her words were for Donald McRae and not for
Peter.

"And if your father does not come, if you never see him again, your
faith in the God we have prayed to for so long will be a little broken,
will it not, Peter?"

She waited, holding her breath for fear even that sound might come
between Peter's answer and the man in the bushes.

"He will come--some day--Mona."

"That was what he promised you--the day he sent you on alone to Five
Fingers, and ran away from you? And you have always told me that next
to your faith in God you believed in your father. You have never
thought that he lied to you that day in the edge of the forest?"

He stared at her, speechless, and in that moment she faced the willows
with a glow of triumph in her eyes.

"Down in the little church at Five Fingers Father Albanel has always
taught us not to lie and to be true to our promise," she said, speaking
directly at the willows. "Peter, if your father should break his
faith, or I should break mine, it would be terrible. And that is what
happened--in my vision--and it has frightened me." She rested her cheek
against his arm so he could not see her face. "I was here--under the
tree--when in this vision your father came. He was ragged and tired and
sick--and so hungry he ate carrots I brought for the beavers. He had
come just to look at you, Peter, but not to let you know. He said it
would make you unhappy; that it was best for you that he should never
come into your life again--and he made me promise not to tell you that
he was here.

"And I promised. I did--I promised him I would be a traitor to you,
after all the years we have waited for him, and prayed for him, and
_believed_ in him."

Her arms crept up to his shoulders. "If I should do a thing like that
God would never forgive me, and you--if some day you found out what I
had done--would never have faith in me again. Would you?"

She hid her face against his shoulder, her heart beating wildly, her
body trembling. For she had seen another movement in the willows and
she was afraid that Donald McRae was going away.

"It was only a dream," Peter was saying, holding his arms closely about
her. "You are not afraid of dreams, Mona?"

And then from behind them came a voice.

"_God forgive me my weakness!_" it cried. "_Peter--Peter----_"

Donald McRae stood out in the open at the edge of the willow thicket.
He had forgotten the rags and mud that covered him, and was no longer
a fugitive with the lines of a hunted man in his face. The present was
for a space obliterated--the present with its menace of the law, its
exhaustion and its poverty; and he was standing once more in the warm
glow of that day of six years ago when he had said good-by to Peter.
In those seconds, when Peter stood shocked into deathlike stillness by
the sound of the voice behind him, Mona could see Donald McRae with his
outreaching arms; but as Peter turned slowly, facing his father, the
strain broke in a hot flood of tears that blinded her vision.

And then----

"_Dad!_"

It was the strangest cry she had ever heard from Peter's lips, and
with an answer to that cry in her own choking breast she turned away
as the two men came into each other's arms. She passed out of sight
along the edge of the pond, scarcely seeing the path ahead of her, and
unconsciously she kept repeating Peter's name in a whisper, as if--even
though she had prayed so long for this hour to come--she had never
quite expected its fulfilment.

CHAPTER XVI

Under the ash tree, for a few moments Peter was the boy again; the boy
of yesterday, of years ago, when the world had held nothing for him
but his father; and there was no change in the touch of the hands that
had always given him comfort and courage and a love that was almost
like a woman's in its gentleness. Not until Donald McRae held his boy
off, with a hand on each shoulder, did something besides the madness
of joy at his father's homecoming begin to thrust itself upon Peter.
Then he saw the change--the naked breast, the half-bared arms, the mud
and the rags, and the face and hair in which years had stamped their
heels unpityingly. He tried to choke back his horror, to keep it out
of his face, and to do this he laughed--laughed through the tears and
sobbing breath--and pointed to a white birch tree in which a blue jay
was screaming.

"The blue jay, dad!" he cried. "Remember that day--behind the log--with
the blue jay in the tree-top, and the sapsucker pecking at our elbows,
and the violets between my knees----"

The hands on his shoulders were relaxing.

"I've never seen a blue jay but what I've thought--of you," said
Donald McRae. "And the river--behind us--and how we got away from
the police--and the rabbits we roasted--and--and----" The world was
twisting and turning round again. He tried to smile, and reached
out gropingly for Peter. "The swamp was hot, Peter. And I am
tired--tired----"

Peter's arms caught him as he swayed. His thin face was whiter, and his
eyes closed as he still tried to smile at his boy.

Mona, braiding her hair as she waited beyond the willows, heard Peter's
frightened call. When she came running to him he was kneeling beside
his father, cooling his face with water from the pond. Donald McRae lay
upon the grass. He was scarcely breathing, and under the scrub of beard
his emaciated face was like wax. An agony of fear and grief had driven
the happiness out of Peter's face, and he tried to speak as he looked
up at Mona.

She saw what had happened as she knelt beside him and took Donald
McRae's head tenderly in her arms. Excitement and his last great
effort to fight down his weakness had given a semblance of strength to
this shell of a man. But it was gone now, and the full measure of its
tragedy struck like a charge of lead to Peter's heart.

Mona, feeling Peter's grief, and guessing swiftly the thought that
had made his wordless lips white and trembling, said to comfort him:
"He hasn't been this way long, Peter. It was the swamp. He told me
the police were after him, and he hid himself there. The heat--bad
water----"

She tried futilely to explain away the horror of the thing--to make
Peter believe this wreck of a man was not the product of months and
years of hardship and suffering, but had reached his condition because
of a passing torment that had covered only a few days in the swamp.
But she knew she was failing, and she stopped before she had finished,
with her head bowed before Peter's eyes. She heard his tense lips
whisper "the police" as if the words choked him as they came out, and
then he went down again to the edge of the pool for water. She wet her
handkerchief when he returned and held it over Donald's eyes, and Peter
unlaced the worn-out, muddy boots--and suddenly a sound came from him,
a little cry of unutterable understanding as his hand found in the
trampled grass the half-eaten carrot which his father had dropped.

She had never seen Peter's face so white, and never before had she seen
a look in his blue eyes so unlike the Peter she had grown up with, and
played with, and loved.

"He is breathing easier," she said. "It was the excitement, the
shock----"

He nodded, and replied in a dead, even voice: "I know what it was,
_Ange_. I know." He took one of his father's hands and held it between
his own, looking at the face in Mona's arms into which life was
beginning to return and breath to come more evenly. "It has been a
long time, dad. Six years--six years like those three days when the
police were hunting us in the forest, and you caught rabbits for me to
eat. But it is ended now."

Mona's heart throbbed. "We will keep him with us, Peter--always! We
will hide him--somewhere--never let him go away again! Oh, it will be
easy for us to do that, and Father Albanel--and Simon--will help us----"

A deeper breath trembled on Donald McRae's lips, but it was not that
breath, or the faint moan that came with it, that stopped her before
she had finished. Peter was looking over her head at something beyond
her. He dropped his father's hand, and what she saw in his face drew
a gasping cry from her even before she knew its cause. She turned and
looked. And then, in an instant, she was on her feet with Peter.

So quietly that no sound of footfall or breaking twig had given warning
of his approach, a man had stolen upon them. He stood not a dozen feet
away, dressed in the field service uniform of the Provincial Police.
That was the first terrible fact which telegraphed itself to her brain;
the man was an officer, he was after Donald McRae, and he had caught
them! But this first alarm gave place to a greater shock as her eyes
saw the face above the uniform. It was a large, coarse face streaming
with sweat; the lips were heavy, the nose big, and the eyes were small
and too close together for one who bulked so large. It was a face
filled with triumph--an exultation which the man made dramatically
poignant as he stood with his heavy hands on his hips, looking from one
to the other with a smile that was deadly in its promise twisting the
corners of his mouth.

He did not speak, did not even move, but waited while his presence
crushed like a weight of horror upon the two who were staring at him.
His eyes rested on Mona, and the wicked gleam in them--the thought
which they could not hide, merciless, sure, almost gloating--drew
his name from her lips in a cry that was filled with fear, with half
disbelief, with a note that almost called for pity.

"_Aleck--Curry!_"

The man's heavy head nodded, but he did not speak. It was still too
great a moment of triumph to be broken by voice. He looked at Peter,
and then, slowly, significantly, at the unconscious form of Peter's
father. God could not have given him a greater hour than this! For if
it had not been for that man and for Peter, he might have had the girl.
It was Peter who had come in his way from that first day when they had
fought over Mona in the edge of the clearing; it was Peter who had
whipped him, Peter whom he had grown to hate above all other things on
earth--and it was Peter's heart and soul and happiness, almost his very
life, that he now held in the hollow of his hand!

And he would make him pay.

"Yes, _it is ended now_," he said, repeating Peter's words of a few
moments before. "And I'm rather glad. The swamp was hot and filled with
mosquitoes."

Something clinked as he fumbled at his belt and the sound sent a chill
of horror through Mona. He held out the manacle irons so that she could
see them.

"I've got to do it," he said, a mocking apology in his voice.
"Distasteful, but necessary." He faced Peter. "Your father knew we
were close behind him, and it won't do him any good to play dead. He's
slippery, and I'm going to put these on him. I guess----" He swung his
heavy head toward Mona again. "I guess Father Albanel and old Simon
can't help him very much from now on. It was nice of you to think of
it, though, Mona. You were always so tender-hearted--when it came to
Peter!"

He was still the old bully and his voice trembled with the suppression
of his triumph. This was his master stroke. It was not capture of the
man whom the law would condemn to hang that thrilled him most; it was
the twisted beauty in Mona's face, the shock and terror in her eyes,
and the helplessness and despair he saw in Peter's. He did not hurry,
did not call for an instant upon the dignity of the law, but twisted
the knife of his vengeance slowly.

When Mona's eyes turned from him to Peter her heart stood still. He
was gray. There was no blood in his lips. He was looking down upon the
still, upturned face of his father, and his hands were clenched. When
he raised his head she saw that his eyes were no longer Peter's eyes.
He advanced slowly toward Aleck Curry, and the manacles rattled as
Aleck dropped them to his belt and shifted a hand to his pistol holster.

Peter did not hear the click of steel or sense the menace of the
shifting hand. One thought pounded maddeningly in his brain; his father
had come back to him, he was _home_, and in the first hour of his
return this beast had come into their lives again to break down every
hope and prayer they had built up during the years. In Aleck Curry he
saw not only that merciless law which had run his father like a rat
from hole to hole, but a monster of vicious hate, a lustful, bullying
boy grown into a still more vicious giant--and Peter's desire was to
kill him.

Mona saw the deadly intent in his slow advance even as Aleck Curry
saw it. She saw more--the hand on the pistol, the tightening fingers,
the dangerous gleam that flashed in Aleck's eyes--and Peter with only
his naked hands! A cry of warning came to her lips--of a terror which
robbed her of the power to move. The cry ended in a scream, for as
Peter leaped in, Aleck raised the pistol and fired. A terrible sickness
came over her, a sickness which for an instant swept away her strength.

Peter felt the hot breath of the pistol in his face and the explosion
was so near it fell like a blow against his eardrums. It was not a shot
intended only to frighten him, for death had missed him by less than
the width of his hand. Aleck released the trigger of his automatic
and crooked his finger again, but even quicker than that movement was
Peter, who flung himself with all his weight under his enemy's arm
as the second shot was fired. He did not strike, but with both hands
clutched Aleck's wrist, and at the same time tripped his foe so that
they went to the earth together, with Aleck on his back.

In this instant there came upon Peter a crushing realization of the
almost deadly odds against him. Into every nerve of his body flashed
the truth--that he was fighting a man who wanted to kill him, who in
reality had the right to kill him, and whom the law would not only
vindicate but would commend for killing him. He was an outlaw, fighting
against the almighty omniscience of that law, and what the world would
regard as justice. And his survival now, like that of his father,
depended upon beating it. He must break his enemy's wrist. Get the gun.
Kill or be killed.

Every ounce of his strength he exerted upon the wrist as Aleck flung
his free arm in a powerful and throttling embrace about his neck. He
drew the wrist in, twisted it, and tried with a sudden effort to give
it the final breaking snap, but it was like a piece of steel that would
not break. The thick fingers did not loosen their hold on the pistol,
and in spite of his desperate effort Peter's staring eyes saw the black
muzzle of the weapon forcing itself a fraction of an inch at a time
toward his body.

Now, when it was too late, he knew that in this close embrace he was
not a match for Aleck. His quickness and his tirelessness counted for
nothing. Aleck, slow, heavy, with not a quarter of his endurance, but
with the brute strength of three men in his coarse body, could crush
the life out of him in close quarters. Yet these first few thrilling
instants Peter knew this thought was not in the other's mind. All of
his enemy's great strength was being exerted in an effort to point the
pistol at his body.

Those two or three minutes in which he knew he was fighting to save his
life seemed like an eternity to Peter. He saw Aleck's face, twisted in
a leering grin, its bloodshot eyes laughing at him, its thick mouth
mocking him as the powerful arm and wrist broke down with a slow,
torturing sureness all the force he was putting against it. The gun
was already at right angles to his body, and suddenly Peter realized
why Aleck Curry had not used the choking force of his other arm before
this. He had waited for the right moment--and that moment had come. The
arm tightened. It was like a half-ring of steel, crushing Peter's neck
and twisting his head so that his widening eyes left the pistol and
stared into the lower branches of the ash tree.

In that moment he saw Mona. She was staggering up from the edge of the
pond with something in her hands which looked like a chunk of mud. Her
face passed over him, desperately white, and then she had fallen on her
knees and he could hear the _beat_, _beat, eat_ of that something in
her hands close to his ears. A terrible cry came from Aleck Curry, and
the throttling arm about Peter's neck relaxed until he could turn his
head again, and he saw Mona pounding his foe's pistol hand with the
stone that had looked like a chunk of mud. He saw the hand redden with
blood saw the thick fingers loosen their grip on the pistol, and then
swift as a flash Mona had snatched the big automatic and was backing
away with it in her hand.

With a mighty, upward heave of his body Peter freed himself, and with
that movement came a wild cry out of him, a joyous approval of what
Mona had done. Aleck lunged after him. They came to their feet. Peter's
fist shot out to the other's jaw, and as Aleck staggered backward,
almost falling under the force of the blow, Peter turned to take the
pistol from Mona. She was halfway to the pond, and even as he cried out
in warning and dismay the weapon left her hand, circled through the air
and disappeared with a splash in the water. At his cry she faced him
and ran back and thrust the mud-covered rock in his hand. Then he saw
the terror in her eyes--the agony of fear that had made her throw away
the weapon that had almost taken his life.

He let the rock slip from his fingers and fall to the ground in spite
of the exclamation of protest which came from her white lips. He did
not see her stoop quickly and pick it up as he advanced to meet Aleck
Curry. His foe was hunched forward, like a gorilla, his head lowered,
his huge fists clenched, his face distorted by the shock of Peter's
blow and a rage which gave him a terrible aspect.

Then he rushed in, his arms apart, his great hands reaching for the man
he hated. With the quickness of a cat Peter met his attack, avoiding
the arms and the huge hands, leaping in, striking and darting back.
He drove blow after blow, and one of them, catching Aleck again on
the jaw, had behind it all the weight and force of his body. But even
that scarcely more than rocked the brutish head on its thick neck.
He advanced slowly and steadily, taking the blows as he moved like a
juggernaut upon Peter, driving him an inch at a time toward the edge of
the pool.

Suddenly Mona ran in from behind, and with both hands she raised her
stone and beat it between Aleck's shoulders. She raised it again,
trying to strike his neck or his head, when with a bellow Aleck flung
himself around, his great arm flying out like a beam. The blow caught
Mona with all its force and sent her in a crumpled heap to the earth.
Not a cry came from her lips, but a yell of fury burst from Peter's. He
rushed in, and a hurricane of blows smashed into Aleck's face, cutting
his lips, blinding him and choking the breath in his throat. But in
that blindness and pain his hand reached out and caught Peter as their
feet sank in the mud at the edge of the pond. A cry of triumph came
from his bleeding mouth. At last his moment had come.

As Peter felt himself dragged into the deadly embrace his mind worked
swiftly. His one chance now lay in the depths of the pool, and unless
he could get his enemy there he was lost. Thrusting up his hands, he
clenched them in Aleck's hair and put all his weight in dragging the
head downward. The movement had its effect, and a step was gained
toward the edge of the muddy shelf that terminated abruptly in eight
feet of water. Unconscious of the trap, Aleck bent himself forward,
putting all the crushing strength of his arms in the grip about Peter's
body, and as Peter flung the weight of his head and shoulders in the
same direction their balance was upset and they plunged into the pond.

As they struck the water Peter drew a great breath into his lungs,
and in the same moment his foe relaxed his grip and began to flounder
wildly in an element in which, even in the days of their boyhood, he
had never been at home. His face rose above the surface for an instant,
and Mona saw it as she staggered to the edge of the pond. It was then
a deadly weight attached itself to one of his kicking legs, and not
until Peter had dragged his burden to the muddy bottom of the beaver
stronghold did he release his hold. He shot up for air, and scarcely
had Aleck's body struggled to the surface when he dived again, and a
second time bore his victim under. This time he expelled most of the
air in his lungs, and for a few seconds hung on like an anchor.

A third and a fourth time, Aleck rose, fighting for his life, but
the fifth time it was Peter who buoyed him up and brought him nearly
unconscious to the shore. He noticed the livid mark made by Aleck's
hand on Mona's forehead as she helped him drag the heavy body out of
the water. In another half-minute he had the manacles intended for his
father about Curry's wrists, and with his belt he securely lashed his
prisoner's legs together. Then he faced Mona.

The same question was in their eyes. In Mona's it was a wordless
terror. Peter looked at his father. He was stirring. A hand rose weakly
from the grass. He had seen nothing of the struggle, heard nothing, and
thought of him was first to leap into Peter's mind.

"He doesn't know what has happened!" he panted. "We must get him
away, Mona. If anything would kill him now, it would be knowledge of
this--that the law has found him--and that I--in helping him--have
become an outlaw myself."

She came to him quickly and put her hands to his face, just as she
had done on that other day years ago when he had fought his great
battle with Aleck. "They can't blame you alone, Peter. I helped." She
held up her lips, but instead of kissing them he pressed his own to
the reddening mark on her forehead. "There is the little cabin," she
whispered. "We can take your father there. And--I love you, Peter!"

She stood back from him, her eyes shining with sudden inspiration.

Aleck Curry had coughed the water out of his lungs and was twisting
in his bonds. His voice called loudly as Peter bent over his father.
Donald's eyes were opening.

"We must hurry!" urged Mona. "We must get away--where he is safe--where
he cannot be found!"

Peter raised his father in his arms. The weight of the emaciated body
sent a stab of pain through him. It was as if he had picked up the limp
form of a boy.

Mona, close at his side, smiled into the grief-filled eyes he turned
toward her. Together they hurried across the meadow. And then Mona ran
on ahead, following a scarcely worn path through deep timber until in a
few moments she came to another little meadow; here, under a clump of
hardwoods, was a tiny cabin of logs--the "play-house" Peter had built
for her two winters ago as a refuge and rest place for her when she
came to visit her beaver pets. Inside a screened porch was a couch of
saplings, and on this she had spread blankets and cushions by the time
Peter arrived.

Donald's eyes were wide open, and he was smiling up wanly at Peter.
"Never thought the day would come when you'd be lugging your dad
around like this, did you, Peter?" he asked, and tried to laugh. But
the moment his head touched the soft cushions his eyes closed again.
Peter drew Mona away. "There is a boat down on the shore of the lake,"
he said, his voice steady again. "I'm going to force Aleck Curry
into it and take him out to that little rock island two miles from
the mainland. No one ever goes near it, and we can keep him there a
prisoner until dad gets well, and then----" An angry yell came from the
beaver pond. "Aleck is getting nervous," he finished. "You stay with
dad, Mona. Tell him I've gone to Five Fingers for things he needs. I'll
come back that way, and will get here before dark. Good-by, _Ange_!"

He kissed her. For a moment Mona clung to his hand.

"When you are down by the big stub--and if everything is all
right--send me back the call," she entreated.

She watched him until he disappeared. Then she sat down close beside
Donald McRae and held one of his limp hands. After what seemed to be a
long time there came back to her clearly Peter's signal-cry, telling
her that all was well, and that he was on his way to the prison island
with Aleck Curry.

Over the forest fell a deep and quieting silence. Never had it seemed
so intense to Mona, as she sat with Donald McRae's hand held closely
in her own. The man's fingers were intertwined with hers as if he was
afraid she would leave him; and his breath, coming more evenly and yet
as faintly as the breath of a child, told her that complete exhaustion
had at last overcome him with a sleep that was almost like death.

Twilight dusk began to fill the aisles of the woods, and with this dusk
the last red glow died out of the west, and with it came the hour Mona
loved more than all others--when darkness began to close in a velvety
mantle over the world. The stillness, the soft whisperings of the
forest and the peace that always came with night gave her courage and
strengthened her faith. And at last, from beyond the beaver pond, she
heard again Peter's cry. He was returning.

And as if he, too, had heard that cry, Donald McRae stirred softly and
whispered Peter's name.

CHAPTER XVII

Quietly Mona went out to meet Peter. "He is sleeping," she said, as
Peter's arm closed about her in the thickening darkness. "If he can
only pass the night that way he will be strong and well again in the
morning." Yet her voice trembled as she tried to bring him comfort.
"Aleck is safe?" she whispered. "He is on the island?"

"Yes, he is safe for tonight--and maybe for a number of days. After
that----"

He stopped, not knowing how to finish, and Mona's soft hand caressed
his cheek. "We will tell Simon, and Uncle Pierre, and Father Albanel,"
she suggested. "Surely they will know how to help us!"

"I've been thinking about that," he said slowly, with his lips against
her hair. "You must promise me not to tell them, Mona. I think it is
necessary. At least they must not know until tomorrow or the next day.
Will you remember that?"

"You are sure it is best?"

"I believe so."

"Then I will remember."

They drew near to the door of the cabin and listened. Faintly they
could hear Donald McRae's breath as he slept.

"I must take you home," he whispered.

They hurried through the gloom, hand in hand. In half an hour they
had reached the cliff trail that led to Five Fingers, and here Mona
insisted that Peter turn back, while she went on alone. She was glad
Pierre and Josette were at Joe's house when she came to the settlement.
She called good night to them through the open door, and went to her
room, with the excuse that she was tired.

She sat down at her window, and watched the moon come up. Later she
heard Pierre and Josette when they returned. And after that, one after
another, the lights went out in Five Fingers until the cabins lay like
great shadows in the slumbering stillness. In this stillness she heard
the clock in her bedroom tick off every second of the hours.

Until now she had never believed that answered prayer could bring with
it a grimness and torture of tragedy like that which had descended
upon her life and Peter's. Passionately she sobbed out her hatred for
Aleck Curry, the monster who at last had descended upon them with his
vengeance.

As the hours dragged on she found herself fighting more and more
desperately against the desire to steal quietly from her room, tiptoe
down the stairs and go to Simon McQuarrie's cabin that she might
confide in him all that had happened that afternoon. Only Peter's
warning to keep their secret locked tightly in her own breast held
her back. Yet in Simon rested her last hope, for from the first day
Peter had come into the old Scotchman's life he had found home--and a
protection and love which in Mona's thoughts made him almost of Simon's
flesh and blood. The impulse to go to him--to be false to Peter for
the first time in her life--was a torment in her brain, and where
one little voice had urged her at first, a hundred added to their
insistence now. Slowly the revolt became a conviction that it was right
and reasonable she should go to Simon, in spite of her promise to Peter.

Quietly she opened the door to her room and went down the stairs,
making no sound to disturb Pierre and Josette Gourdon. A slim, pale
figure, she crossed the clearing and paused in the shadow of the cabin
where the Scotchman lived. Instinctively she looked up at Peter's
window even though she knew he was in the forest with his father.
Then she knocked on the door. Her heart throbbed as she listened for
a response inside. It seemed to beat loudly, as if crying out against
her faithlessness in breaking a promise to Peter. She knocked again,
and in a moment she could hear McQuarrie moving. She counted his slow
footsteps as they came across the floor. Then the door opened, and his
tall, gaunt figure stood above her, swathed in a nightgown that fell to
the toes of his feet. At any other time Mona would have laughed at the
grotesqueness of his appearance as he stared down into her white face,
with a nightcap on the back of his head.

He reached out a hand. "_Ange!_" he gasped. "_You!_ What is the matter?"

She slipped past him and closed the door.

"Please light a lamp," she said. "Please----"

Simon struck a match. The flare of it illumined his face, tense and set
in its amazement. When the lamp was lighted he took down a coat from a
peg in the wall and put it on. Then he turned to Mona again. She stood
before him with her hands clasped at her breast, and in her dark eyes
was a look that alarmed him. And he could see in her bare throat the
little heart-beating throb that always came when she was stirred by
deep emotion.

With a desperate little cry she caught his hand. "Something terrible
has happened," she whispered. "Something--you should know. But I
promised Peter. I promised him I would tell no one--not even you. But
I've got to turn that promise into a lie. If I don't----" The words
broke on her lips. And then: "Peter's father has come back. He is with
Peter now in the cabin near the beaver pond!"

Simon McQuarrie stood back from her, his hands dropping slowly and
limply to his sides. Then he raised one of them as if to brush a
shadow from his forehead, and his nightcap fell to the floor. "Donald
McRae--has come back!" he repeated, and the deep lines in his face
softened as Mona looked at him, and joy trembled in his voice when he
spoke. "Thank God, _Ange_! Why do you think it is so terrible? We have
waited and hoped for a long time----" He stopped. What he saw in her
face and eyes swept a sudden change into his own, and he caught her arm
as the gladness died on his lips. "Has anything happened?" he demanded.
"Has anything happened--to Peter--or to Donald McRae?"

She began telling him in a low voice, while Simon stared at her with
his big hands reaching out as if to grip at something in the space
between them.

"I was at the beaver pond when Peter's father staggered out of the
willows and almost fell at my feet. I didn't know who the man was, but
he was sick and tired and starving--so hungry he ate carrots I had
meant for the beavers. I gave him our lunch, and while he was eating I
learned he was Peter's father. It made me happy. Peter was coming to
join me, and I told Donald McRae. He begged me not to let Peter know
he was there. He wanted to hide in the bushes, and look at him without
being seen, and then go away again. He said that was why he had come
back--just to get a look at his boy. He told me the police were after
him again, that they were driving him like a rat from hole to hole, and
that his presence could only bring unhappiness and tragedy to Peter. So
he hid in the willows, and Peter came."

"And then?"

"In the end Peter's father staggered out of the bushes, and I left
them together. Peter called me a little later and I ran back. Donald
McRae was on the ground and at first I thought he was dead. Not until
then did I realize how terribly sick and weak he was. We were on our
knees beside him when he looked up, and there--there--grinning down at
us--was the man Peter's father had been running away from. Oh, he was
terrible--big and sweaty and leering down at us, almost laughing in his
triumph, and--Simon--Simon--it was _Aleck Curry_!"

Her despair broke in a sobbing cry, and now the bones of Simon's great
hands made a snapping sound as he clenched them, and his thin, hard
face was gray in the glow of the lamp. "What happened then, Mona?"

"When Aleck went to put the manacles on Peter's father there was a
fight--a terrible fight--and Aleck tried to kill Peter with a gun. He
shot twice. I helped with a stone, and at last Peter got him into the
pond, and almost drowned him. His father was still unconscious when we
carried him to the cabin. Then Peter took Aleck down to his boat and to
the little rock island two miles out from the shore. He is there now--a
prisoner. And--what will happen to Peter? What can the law do to him?"

Simon paced slowly back and forth across the floor. His face was a mask
of iron. His long nightgown flapped about his feet, and again his big,
hard hands hung limp and straight at his sides.

"If Aleck escapes from the island and arrests Peter, or reports
the affair to headquarters, it means the penitentiary," he said as
if speaking to himself rather than to Mona. "And that is what will
happen--if Curry has his way. He hates Peter. He would like to see
Donald McRae hung, and Peter in prison, and _you_----" A tigerish gleam
was in his eyes as he faced her. "Why didn't Peter kill him when he
had the chance?" he cried, as for a single moment his self-control
broke its leash. "As a boy he was a brute and a bully, and as a man his
soul is that of a monster--even though now he is a part of the law.
He wanted you--always. I know it and could see it even when you were
children. And for what he wants he would wreck the world. Why didn't
Peter kill him? Why--with these two hands----" He reached out his long
arms and his fingers closed like talons of steel. Then he checked
his passion. His arms dropped again. "But it is best he didn't," he
finished. "It is best--even though a snake has a better right to live
than Aleck Curry!"

He continued his pacing across the floor, and with each step his stern
face grew harder until at last it seemed to have no emotion at all--the
hard, set, fighting face which Simon McQuarrie always turned upon his
enemies. For a few moments he seemed to forget Mona. Then he asked:
"What is Peter going to do? What does he _plan_ to do?"

The question was so sharp it sent a little shiver through her, and
Simon's eyes were looking at her with the steely coldness of ice.

"I don't know. Peter doesn't know--except that he means to keep Aleck
Curry on the island until his father is well and can get safely away."

Simon grunted. "You mean the rock with nothing on it--two miles
straight out from the beaver pond?"

"Yes."

The fingers of Simon's hands were twisting again.

"Constable Carter dropped in on us late this afternoon," he said
shortly. "He told Pierre and Dominique he was on his way into the
Georgian Bay country and would rest here for a few days. He lied. He's
working with Aleck Curry, and if Aleck doesn't show up soon--if he
starts smoke signals going out on the island, and Carter sees them----"

"Aleck hasn't any matches," Mona interrupted him quickly. "Peter took
them away from him."

Simon's face was lightened for an instant by a flash of exultation.
"Peter is improving," he conceded. "If he had only used as good
judgment at the beaver pond, when he could have rid us of this snake
forever----"

Mona's cry of horror stopped him. In a moment he was at her side, and
his long arms were about her tenderly. "I didn't mean that, Ange!" he
cried, trying to laugh as he saw the agony of fear in her eyes. "It's
a bad situation, so bad that I don't see a way out for Peter just
now--but we won't kill Aleck, and we'll get Peter out of it somehow.
He was right in making you promise not to tell anyone, and I'll keep it
all to myself--even from Peter and my old friend Donald McRae--until
Carter leaves the settlement. I'll manage to get him away in a day or
two. And meanwhile you and Peter must keep Curry on the island, and
watch every step you take so that Carter won't get suspicious. And
above everything else--_most important of all_--don't tell Peter you
have confided in me. Let me know everything that happens, but don't
tell Peter that I know. Do you understand, Mona?"

She felt the suppression of something in his voice that was unlike
Simon McQuarrie, something that thrilled and frightened her, yet she
nodded her head and said: "Yes, I understand. I won't let Peter know.
And I'll tell you--everything."

His arms drew her a little closer, and in him above all other men
she had faith in that moment. She did not see his face above her, a
face which for a single instant darkened with a look so pitiless and
menacing that even Simon sensed the danger of its betrayal, and held
her for a moment longer. Then with the gentleness which love for Mona
and Peter had bred into his stern nature, he led her to the door.

"You must go home now, and to bed," he said. "It is your fight as
well as Peter's, and you mustn't let anyone see that you are worried
tomorrow--especially Carter." He opened the door. "Good night, _Ange_!"

"Good night!" she whispered as she slipped out.

He closed the door and listened for a moment to her retreating
footsteps. When he faced the lamp and looked up at Peter's room, a new
and strange light was in his eyes, and he spoke softly, as if to the
spirit of someone who was waiting and listening up there.

"It's my turn now, and I'll care for Peter," he said. "A long time ago
Donald McRae killed the man who insulted his mother, and it is no more
than right and just that Simon McQuarrie should kill the man who would
destroy her boy."

Then, slowly, he began to dress.

For a little while Mona hesitated in the shadow of the tall spruce tree
that grew not far from Simon's door. She could hear her heart beating
as she looked back at the light in the cabin. She was glad it was over,
glad she had told Simon the truth, even as she thought of her promise
to Peter.

Yet one thing she had kept to herself, and for a moment she felt the
urge to go back and confide in the iron-willed Scotchman her own
personal fear of Aleck Curry. Never until this night had she been
afraid of him. She had defied and hated him as a young girl, and as
she grew older had loathed and repulsed him for the persistence of his
passion. To fear him had never entered her head, even in the days when
once or twice she had used her hands in defending herself against, his
unwelcome attentions.

But now she knew that Aleck's hour had come. Even though he was
temporarily a prisoner on the island, he held her happiness and Peter's
fate in the hollow of his hand. That fact, its significance, its
terrible import for her, she had seen in Aleck's exultant face and eyes
at the pool. In that hour his joy and triumph was not that he had run
down Peter's father, but that _she_ at last had come within the reach
of his desires. And the fight had added to his mastery, for it had
outlawed Peter and had given to the man she hated the final power to
wreck her world. And she, of all that world, was the only one who knew
what Aleck's price for the freedom of those she loved would be.

The thought was a monstrous thing in her brain. She had fought it,
had beaten it back with the strength of her will, and she struggled
with it again as she turned away from the light in Simon's window.
Her hands clenched and a bit of savagery leaped through her blood as
she went again through the moonlight. She had seen the deadly fire in
the Scotchman's eyes, and that fire was now in her own. Over and over
she told herself that she was still unafraid of Aleck Curry. Her lips
whispered the words. But in her heart, fixed and implacable, remained
the fear.

She had almost reached the shadow of Pierre Gourdon's cabin when
a figure stepped out to meet her. It was Peter. His startled face
questioned her in the moonlight.

"I thought you were asleep," he said in a low voice. "And so--I was
passing under your window. I wanted to be near you for a few moments."

He put his arms about her and looked anxiously into her face, and then
he laid his lips against her soft hair.

"It was impossible." She shivered against him. "I undressed, as you
told me to do, and I went to bed. But I had to get up. I kept thinking,
thinking--until I felt like screaming, or jumping out of my window and
running to you."

"You are a little frightened, _Ange_--after what happened at the pool.
But it will all come out right. Aleck is safe. He can't harm us----"

She looked up quickly, and saw in his eyes the same look that had been
in Simon's. Her arms tightened about him.

"Peter, you don't need to hide anything from me," she protested. "We're
both thinking the same thing--afraid of the same thing. It's Aleck
Curry--and what he will do when he gets off the island. We can keep him
there until your father is well, and safe. But after that--what will
happen to you?"

Peter tried to laugh. "They can't do anything worse than send me to
prison, and if they do that--would you mind waiting for me, _Ange_?"

She knew the effort he was making to speak lightly, almost playfully,
and her heart throbbed with the eager quickness of her answer. "I would
wait for you all my life, Peter."

With a sudden movement he drew her into the shadow of the cabin. His
eyes were searching the farther edge of the clearing.

"Look!" he said.

Her eyes pierced the moon glow. And then, dimly, she saw a moving
shadow. It came nearer, and turned toward Simon's cabin. Instinctively
she guessed who it was, but waited for Peter to speak.

"I found him nosing around when I returned to the settlement," he said.
"A little while ago he was here, looking up at your window; then he
went to Simon's, and afterward sneaked off into the edge of the forest.
I don't know who he is, but I was within ten feet of him and he wears a
uniform like Aleck's. He is watching for dad. He is also suspicious and
is wondering why Aleck doesn't show up."

"His name is Carter," said Mona. "He came to Five Fingers this
afternoon."

CHAPTER XVIII

For a long time they stood in the shadow of the cabin, and the sleepy
stillness of the night with its soft chirping of crickets and gentle
murmuring of the lake surf brought a soothing peace to Mona. With
Peter's arms about her she was no longer afraid. He told her what had
happened since she left his father. Twice Donald McRae had awakened
from his sleep of exhaustion and had asked for her. A thrill of
pleasure was in Peter's voice as he told her this; it made him happy
to know that his father loved her, and that he even whispered her name
in his feverish slumber. Some day the whole of their prayer would be
answered; things would turn out right; and they would all be happy.

Not until he had gone, and she was alone in her room, did Mona note how
swiftly the time had passed. The hour hand of the little clock was at
three. She did not undress, but sat down at her window, with her face
turned toward the coming of the dawn. And now that Peter's love and
the unbreakable strength of his optimism were no longer at her side,
her thoughts began pressing upon her again, dispelling the comfort he
had given her and weakening once more her faith and hope in what the
day would bring. She was glad she confided in Simon, for he was the
rock to which she clung in these hours of her own helplessness. And
yet--what could Simon do? Wherein was he less helpless than herself--or
Peter? She shivered as she recalled the grim and terrible look that
had last rested in his face. And that same look had been in Peter's--a
flash which he had tried to hide from her! Her heart jumped and for an
instant her fingers clutched at the sill of her window. Would one of
them--Simon or Peter--_kill Aleck Curry_?

It seemed to her that a terrible truth rushed upon her all at once and
caught like a living thing at her throat until it was difficult for
her to breathe. There was no hope for Peter as long as Aleck lived!
The words almost came from her lips. Unless Peter ran away, wandering
and hiding like his father, no power could keep him from going to
prison. But if Aleck should never leave the little island--if he died
there--and no one knew of the fight at the pool----

She bowed her face in her arms. It would be so easy of
accomplishment--so terribly and frighteningly easy! Peter might do it!
And Simon--the look in his face--his eyes--what he said----

"No, no, no," she whispered to herself. "Anything--anything but that!"

She raised her head to meet the first rose-flush of the dawn. But this
morning there was no responsive thrill in Mona's breast. A question
was repeating itself in her brain. Would she be able to go through
the day without giving herself away? Could she meet Pierre and Josette
Gourdon, and Marie Antoinette, and Father Albanel, and Adette and Jame
Clamart--and not let them see her torture? Would it show in her face
when she met Carter, of the Provincial Police?

Until the first white spirals of smoke began rising from the cabin
chimneys she sat at her window. Then she rose, and her beautiful face
was almost stern in its resolution. She let the sunlight stream into
her room, and in its radiance she unbraided her hair and brushed it
until it lay about her in the rippling glory that made Peter the
happiest and proudest of all men. She dressed it carefully, and
tried to sing as she made herself ready to help Josette with the
breakfast--for she always sang in this first hour of the day. But the
notes seemed to stifle her this morning.

It was then, looking out from her window, that she saw a grayish haze
rising between her and the face of the sun, and the smell of it came to
her faintly. It was smoke.

When she went below it was Pierre she met first. He kissed her. But
anxiety was in his face.

"It is happening again this year," he said. "The forests to the north
and west are afire. It will not come near Five Fingers, but it makes my
heart ache to know that a world is being turned dead and black because
of someone's carelessness!"

So it was the fire which gave Mona an excuse for what was lacking in
her eyes when she went to help Josette with the breakfast. And it was
this same fire, with its thickening gloom of smoke, which helped her
through the day. For to Mona a living tree had life and soul, and to
see trees destroyed in countless thousands was a tragedy in her life
only a little less terrible than the plague of smallpox which had once
cast its shadow upon Five Fingers.

She went to Simon's cabin as soon after breakfast as she could make
an excuse, and there she met Carter. Her first glimpse of him filled
her with uneasiness and dislike. He was a hawk-nosed, shifty-eyed man
in whom nature seemed to have sacrificed every softening quality to
an uncompromising sense of duty, and his eyes rested upon her face so
intently as Simon introduced them that she felt her heart tremble. But
if he knew of her previous visit to Simon's cabin, or of her meeting
with Peter, he gave no evidence of it, and after a casual remark or two
about the fire he left her alone with the Scotchman.

A worried look was in McQuarrie's eyes.

"I've found out more about Carter," he said. "He is the best man in
this division and is never sent out on minor affairs. Leaving us so
quickly right now shows how clever he is. He doesn't want to create
suspicion. He dropped in to ask me the best trail northwest, and says
he is going to leave in half an hour to make a report on the fire.
That's another lie. In the woods he is like a cat, and he won't go
half a mile from the settlement. He is wondering where Peter is, and if
he once gets on his trail----" Suddenly he drew his hands together, and
a grim smile gathered about his mouth. "If Carter goes to that fire,
I'm going with him!" he exclaimed. "Five Fingers is interested, and he
cannot very well turn me down."

In a few words Mona told of Peter's visit; and then, standing so near
that he could not avoid the directness of her eyes, she gave low voice
to her suspicion that either he or Peter was planning to kill Aleck
Curry.

The effect of her words on Simon startled her. He stood dumb, staring
at her. Then one of his bony hands reached out and rested on her
shoulder. Its fingers hurt her. "Don't even whisper that anywhere--but
here," he said. "You understand? _Don't!_ Peter won't kill him. And I'm
not worrying about Aleck Curry now. It's Carter."

He left her without another word, and went out to overtake Carter.
There was something so grim and foreboding in his movement that it
chilled her, and as she dropped a few steps behind him she noticed his
boots. At midnight she had seen them in his cabin, clean and freshly
oiled. Now they were frosted with half-dried mud to their tops. His
sourness, the harshness of his fingers on her shoulder, his silence
now and the aggressive hunch of his shoulders, together with the mud
on his boots, tightened her breath. Had Simon already accomplished the
thing she feared? Was that why he was so anxious to follow Carter, go
with him--get him away from Five Fingers? She ran up to him, meaning to
demand the truth.

He anticipated her intention and spoke almost roughly. "Don't ask
questions, Mona. Carter has stopped, and is looking. Go home--and stay
in if you can't keep control of yourself."

The rest of the morning Mona waited anxiously for Peter. At noon, when
they were at dinner, Pierre Gourdon talked of little but the fire. It
had surely crossed the line of rail thirty miles north, he said, and
was traveling steadily eastward. If the wind should quicken and swing
into the south there would be danger to the forests about Five Fingers.
But the settlement itself was safe, protected as it was by fire-lines
and cultivated fields on three sides, and Lake Superior on the other.

He wondered where Simon McQuarrie was, and asked Mona if she had seen
Peter. He surmised they had gone back to the crests of the high ridges
to make a closer observation of the fire. He had already sent out Jame
Clamart and Poleon Dufresne to guard the northern ridges, and if the
fire threatened to break coastward, all the men in Five Fingers would
go out to fight it. He had made preparations. But he didn't like the
way Peter and Simon were missing, without leaving any word behind them.
Carter was gone, too.

Afternoon saw smoke settling like a thin fog about the clearing. The
sun was entirely hidden. Animals and fowls came up to the buildings,
and men and women gave up their work to discuss with one another the
possibilities of the next few hours. A dozen times Mona repressed the
desire to steal away and go to the little cabin where Donald McRae was
hidden. She knew Peter was there, and now that the smoke was thickening
she believed he would soon leave for the settlement.

She noticed how hot and sultry it had grown in the last hour. Scarcely
a breath of air was stirring, and in the middle of the afternoon Adette
Clamart insisted that she go with her for a swim down in the inlet.
While they were in the water Peter came up from the lake in a boat.
His sail was down and he was rowing. Adette Clamart covered her pretty
eyes with her two hands while he bent over to kiss Mona, and in that
moment he whispered, "I want to see you in the cabin." He was acting
strangely, Mona thought.

A few minutes later she joined him in the cabin.

"Dad is better," Peter said. "But tonight I'm going to get him
away--somewhere. I'm afraid of the fire. With a bad wind it would be on
us in an hour or two. Right now I want to take some supplies over to
Aleck Curry. Then I'll come back and see you before I return to dad.
There's a little breeze on the lake, and I can make the island in an
hour. Have you seen Carter?"

"This morning. He hasn't been here since then."

"And Simon?"

"He is gone, too."

She got a bundle she had prepared and said good-by to Peter but not
until he had promised to return directly from the island by way of the
inlet. She watched him until he disappeared in the gray haze that hung
over the water, and then looked at the clock to mark the time he would
be returning. Scarcely had she done this when a figure stalked past one
of the windows. Instantly she recognized it as Simon McQuarrie. He went
straight to his cabin, entered it and closed the door. _And Carter was
not with him!_

Her heart throbbed as she went outside, determined to follow him. But
something held her back. Then she forced herself to follow her first
impulse, and a moment later was knocking at Simon's door. There was no
answer. She persisted, knocking loudly and calling his name, and still
there was no response. Then she tried the door and found it locked.
Where there had been fear in her breast there was now conviction. The
tiger in the old Scotchman had been at work, and in his own way--_and
the only way_--he had solved the great problem of her life and Peter's,
and had made the world free again for his old friend Donald McRae. He
had rid the island of Aleck Curry, and had done away with Carter. And
now he wanted to be alone--alone in his cabin!

Not for a moment did she question the reasonableness of her
conviction. It seized upon her like a many-tentacled thing, choking
back her doubt and overwhelming her with its certainty. It made her
steal pantingly to the edge of the forest, and then to the beginning
of the long finger of spruce and cedar that reached away out to the
entrance of Middle Finger Inlet. Half an hour later she was on the sand
and gravel beach under the big cliff, waiting for Peter's return. And
now she noticed a change in the wind. Loose tresses of her hair blew
seaward. That meant the fire would come over the ridges!

In another quarter of an hour she could scarcely see the farther side
of Middle Finger Inlet. A black pall of smoke was creeping closer in
the north and west. Then, very faintly, she saw something creeping
up like a ghost out of the smoke gloom of the sea. She knew it was
Peter. He was coming with nerve-racking slowness, it seemed to her. Yet
she did not want to cry out to him until he was nearer. He was using
his oars, and at times there was a half-minute interval between his
strokes. Why was he so slow? Was it because of what he had found on the
island? Surely Simon would have left no telltale signs. So far as Peter
was concerned Aleck Curry could only be _missing_--nothing more!

A shudder ran through her. Then she cried Peter's name. Her voice
carried strangely clear. There was silence in the boat. The oars were
resting without a sound.

"Peter," she cried again. "Peter! I am here--on the point!"

He must have heard her, and it was unusual that he did not answer.
But the oars rattled again, and she could see the shape of the boat
turning slowly, and then growing larger as it came toward her. It was
odd, too, that Peter did not come directly to the point, but grounded
his boat among the big rocks fifty yards below her--a place where he
knew it was difficult for her to go. So she stood on the white sand,
waiting for him. She could hear his boots on the rocks; then she saw
him approaching through a dusk of early twilight thickened by the smoke
of the fire.

"Here I am, Peter," she called softly.

It did not seem like Peter, for the figure was grotesquely large, and
slower of movement. She held out her arms, and her eyes were glowing.
It was the smoke and the dusk that made Peter look like that! And then
her heart stopped beating. The figure was within ten feet of her. It
was not Peter. _It was Aleck Curry!_

CHAPTER XIX

In that moment Mona felt for the first time in her life the giving
way of living tissue under the sudden overwhelming stress of complete
shock. Strength left her body, her arms dropped limply, and she felt
herself swaying, as if about to fall. Had there been anything near her
she would have caught at it. She did not know that to Aleck Curry she
was betraying no physical sign of her weakness--that she was standing
like a lifeless creature carved out of rock, except that her wide eyes
were blazing and her lips parted. What seemed an age to her covered
but a few seconds. Then her mind leaped back, fierce in its command of
her. She was wrong! Simon had not been to the island! He had not harmed
Aleck Curry--and Aleck had returned in Peter's boat. _What had happened
to Peter?_

She did not ask the question. It blazed out of her eyes as Aleck
advanced until he was almost within arm's reach of her. He had on only
shirt and trousers, and he was barefooted. She could see his naked
throat. And surprise, joy, the knowledge of his mastery lay in his
heavy face. It was transformed. He smiled at her, and his great arms
reached out as if he were Peter and she would come into them.

"I made a bargain with Peter," he said, "and he changed places with me.
I made him see how much it meant for him, and for his father, and for
you. I'd let his father go and forget everything--for something I want.
So he changed places with me, and I've come to see you. Lucky you're
here. Lucky you called."

It was a clumsy lie, and stumbled on his lips. The menace of him
filled her with horror. But she did not let him see it--now. He came a
step nearer, and she backed away from him. Suddenly her mind whipped
inspirational words from her lips. She looked up swiftly to the top of
the cliff. "I don't want Carter to see you here," she cried quickly.
"He walked down the point with me, and I think he's up there."

The significance of her words was not lost upon Aleck. He moved nearer
to the cliff, so that one above could not see them. She followed him,
fighting back her fear.

"Why don't you want Carter to see us?" he asked in a throaty whisper.

"Because--if he saw us--everything would be lost. You would not dare
help me then. And you will, Aleck--you will help me, won't you?" He was
stunned by the change in her. She had laid a hand on his arm. Her eyes
were shining at him. "But you must tell me the truth. There isn't any
need to lie. What did you do to Peter--when he came to the island?"
Her fingers pressed his flesh. There was almost a smile on her lips.

"The smoke was thick," said Aleck. "I heard him coming and hid in
the water. Then I stunned him with a club. He ain't bad--not badly
hurt--but he's safe enough on the island!"

Mona crushed back the little cry of relief that wanted to come to
her lips. Her eyes glowed at Aleck, and suddenly one of his big
hands closed about the one she had laid on his arm. She could feel
his breath as he bent over her. "I told you my time would come," he
cried in a husky, exultant voice. "_My day!_ And it's here. I got 'em
both--safe--one to hang, the other----"

"_Sh-h-h!_"

She placed a finger to her lips. It was an excuse to draw away from
him, get her hand free--and not let him hear the terrified beating of
her heart. She looked up again at the cliff.

"Did you hear anything?"

"No. And if anyone hears _us_ it's going to be your fault and not mine!"

It was impossible to escape the look in his face and eyes. It was
not necessary for him to use words. But Mona did not flinch from her
peril. It was not only her danger, but Peter's, and Donald McRae's,
and Simon's if he had harmed Carter. It had suddenly and unexpectedly
become her fight--all hers, and she knew that Aleck Curry thought she
was yielding, and that the brute in him was held in leash only by this
belief that was beginning to possess him. If he guessed the truth,
guessed that she was fighting to trick him, nothing would save her,
not even her assertion that Carter was on the cliff above them. So she
smiled again at Aleck, and laughed very softly, with a nervous twisting
of her hands. Her eyes had never looked at him as they were looking at
him now. They were like glowing stars, velvety-soft--hiding hate and
desperation behind them. She had never looked half so beautiful, or so
unresisting, to Aleck Curry.

Her fingers pressed his arm again.

"I must get Carter away," she whispered. "I've got to do it, Aleck! He
mustn't know. I'll hurry. And then I'll come back. I promise!"

Horror seized her as she felt him drawing her toward him. But still
she did not resist. With a low cry his great arms were about her. She
felt herself almost broken against him, and then she was helpless,
her head bent back, and his thick lips killing her with kisses. Again
her strength left her, and she lay limp in his arms, smothered in his
passion. Those moments of helpless and agonized passiveness saved
her. To Aleck it was surrender. His arms loosened and allowed her to
breathe. Weakly she pressed against him, and he allowed her partly to
free herself. But she could still feel his hot breath like a poisonous
fume in her face. He bent forward and kissed her again--on the mouth.
It almost choked her.

"I must--must get Carter away!" she gasped. "Then I'll come back. If
you won't let me do that, I'll--I'll scream--and Carter will hear us.
But if you'll let me get him away, so he'll never know--never be able
to tell Peter----"

It was unnecessary for her to finish. Aleck's face was transformed by
an iniquitous joy. He looked close into her face, and she looked back
at him, unafraid.

"I'll let you go--and get Carter away," he said. "If you don't come
back soon, I'll go to Five Fingers--and you know what that means for
Peter and his father."

"I'll come," she lied.

She climbed up the narrow footpath to the top of the cliff, and getting
her breath there, she called Carter's name--loudly enough for Aleck to
hear.

Then she began to run. She was still weak, and it seemed to her that
the poison of Aleck Curry's embraces and kisses followed her. She began
to sob under her breath. There was no turning of the ways for her now.
She must tell someone the truth--anyone--the first man she met. But
Simon first of all. On the little island Peter might be dying. Maybe
Aleck had killed him, for it was in his power to do so and still be
within the law. She began to moan his name. Then she came to the crest
of a high knoll which was bare of trees, and what she saw ahead of her
stopped her, gulping for breath and almost falling in her exhaustion.

A wind was in her face. And northward there was no longer a black pall
of smoke but a world afire. The glow of the conflagration reached from
the earth to the sky. It swept in a great arc, and red seas of flame
were leaping from peak to peak of the farther ridges. Pierre Gourdon's
fear had become a reality. The fire was racing with the speed of the
wind itself upon Five Fingers!

She ran on. Her hair caught in the brush, and she clutched it in front
of her. She came at last to the edge of the clearing and staggered
across it. There were lights in the cabins, in her own home, in Adette
Clamart's, in Dominique Beauvais's and half a dozen others. But Simon's
was dark. Yet she swayed toward that, hopeful to the last--and almost
at the door she came upon Simon. He was rigid and still, like a shadow.
She could see his gray, hard face. Then he heard her panting, heard
her trying to gasp out her terrible news, and his arms reached out and
gathered her to him--and she told him what had happened to Peter.

Ten minutes later Simon was leaving in a sailboat.

"It's so dark Curry won't see me when I pass through the mouth of the
inlet," he said. "And I'll reach Peter in half an hour."

Mona went back to McQuarrie's cabin, climbed to Peter's room and
lighted a lamp. In a cedar box she found Peter's thirty-eight-caliber
automatic and loaded it with skilful fingers. Then she extinguished
the light, descended the ladder and left the cabin in the direction of
her tryst with Aleck Curry. There was only one thing for her to do,
and her mind was quite fixed. It was her right to be at the end of the
point waiting for Simon and Peter. And if Aleck threatened her--or put
his hands on her again--she would kill him. That was the one way out.
It would save Peter, and Peter's father, and herself.

It was not a monstrous thing but a just and righteous act--this wiping
out of existence of a creature who threatened to destroy everything
that made her world a fit place to live in.

She had nearly passed the Clamart cabin when a white figure ran out of
the gloom, and she had only time to hide the pistol in her dress when
Adette Clamart was holding her excitedly by the arm. Adette's lovely
face was white, and she was half out of breath from running.

"It is terrible!" she cried. "Jame says the fire will be at your
beaver pond within an hour, and he has just started in that direction
with Jeremie Poulin and Carter--to keep it from coming over the last
ridge----"

"Carter!" gasped Mona.

"Yes. Jame told him about the cabin Peter built, and Carter said
it was a shame not to save it, and the beavers. Jame says it is
impossible--that a hundred men couldn't keep the fire back--but Carter
insisted, and they've gone!"

Mona tried to force words from her lips, and thanked God that Adette
hurried on, crying back to her that she was making an effort to
overtake Jame before he got out of the clearing, to give him a lunch
which he had forgotten. Carter had returned--and was on his way to the
cabin in which Peter's father was hidden! And that cabin, Jame said,
would be in the heart of the fire within an hour! With Peter dead or
wounded on the island, and Simon gone, what hope was there now for
Donald McRae? If the fire did not reach his cabin first, Carter would
get him, and if the fire beat out Carter----

Mona's dry lips gave a little cry. Through the pitch-filled evergreen
forest about the beaver pond the fire would sweep in a destroying
inundation which no living creature could outrace if the wind was
behind it; and Donald McRae, sick and helpless, would be the first
human victim in its descent upon Five Fingers.

The peril which was threatening Peter's father from two directions
worked a swift and thrilling change in Mona. She must beat out
Carter--and she must beat out the fire! Thought of Aleck Curry became
secondary to this more immediate necessity. She could settle with Aleck
later. But she must reach the cabin _now_. There was not a minute or
a second to lose if she was to get there ahead of Jame and Carter.
She began to run again, following a path through the meadow into the
strip of forest between the settlement and the shore of the lake. Her
feet and Peter's had worn this trail smooth, and she knew that in
the thickening gloom of smoke and night she was traveling faster than
Carter and Jame Clamart, who were going by the rougher tote-road. In
ten minutes she reached the cliff which ran westward along the lake.

Here she was high, and there were no trees to shut out her view of the
ridge country. What she saw appalled her. Nowhere in the north was
there any longer a wall of blackness. The world was red, with lurid
flashings that came and went like mighty explosions. Westward, beyond
the beaver pond, she could see the leaping of the flames in the thick
spruce and cedar timberlands where ten thousand barrels of pitch and
resinous oils were turning sleeping forests into boiling caldrons of
fire. The smell of this oil and pitch was heavy in her nostrils, and
she could hear the moaning, distant roar of the conflagration as one
hears the roar of great furnaces when the fuel doors are opened. But it
was the wind that brought quicker fear to her heart. It was beginning
to blow strongly from the north and west, and carried with it a heat
that was stifling. And with this heat and wind came also a thickening
cloud of ash particles, until at last, afraid of their increasing
sting, she stopped to take off her skirt and fasten it about her hair
and face.

Halfway to the pond, with still another mile to go, she saw the flames
leaping over the last ridge, and her heart seemed suddenly to give way
in a sobbing cry of agony and despair. She was too late. Between that
ridge and Peter's father was less than a mile of spruce and cedar and
balsam forest, with pitch-sodden jackpines interspersed so thickly that
no power less than God could hold back the speed of the holocaust. With
the wind that was behind them the flames would be at the cabin before
she could cover a quarter of the distance to Peter's father.

For a few moments she sank down helpless and without strength, sobbing
for breath as she stared at the merciless red death which had beaten
her--and Carter. And in these moments her agony was greater than when
Aleck had told her about Peter, for now she was picturing a man,
creeping out on his hands and knees to face that sea of flame--a man,
sick and helpless, crying out for Peter, for her, and dying by inches
with their names on his lips.

She staggered to her feet and went on, and in her dazed mind lived a
prayer that Donald McRae might be given strength to drag himself to the
shore of the lake. If that strength had not already come to him, it was
now too late, for as she toiled over a high and craggy point in the
cliff the wind blew hot in her face, and where the beaver pond should
be was a red hell of flames.

The trail descended as she forced herself on--descended from the
ramparted ledge to the smooth, sandy level of the beach, and suddenly
she was conscious of the crashing of bodies in the thickets and the
frenzied sound of living things. A great moose swept so near her that
she sprang from his path--a monstrous beast with flaming eyes and
snorting nostrils, closely followed by a darker, rounder object that
she knew was a bear, racing for the safety of the water. She came to
the sandy open where the trail swung straight ridgeward toward the
beaver pond, and stopped, knowing she could go no farther unless she
defied the death from which all other living creatures were flying.

Piteously Mona cried out--to Peter, to Simon, to Donald McRae, and then
to God; and at last she fell down with her face buried in her skirt,
ready to welcome death itself in this hour when not only her world but
all that she loved in it were doomed to destruction.

It was a sound close to her that uncovered her face, a sound that came
strangely above the moaning roar of heat-wind and flame, and staring
through the gloom and against the red glare of the burning forests,
she saw a grotesque shadow--something that was not moose nor deer nor
any four-footed thing she had ever seen in the wilderness; and rising
up before it she saw that it was a man bent under a huge, limp burden
which he carried. She cried out, and a choking voice answered her--a
strange, terrible, unhuman sort of voice, yet the sound of it nearly
split her heart, and when the figure deposited its burden in the white
sand and stood up she saw that it was Peter. She stumbled toward him.
His arms caught her, and she could hear him sobbing under the strain of
his fight, and his heart was beating so hard that each throb of it sent
a tremor through his body. In his weakness her own strength returned,
and in a moment her hands had left his face and she was at the side of
the man who lay upon the sand.

It was Donald McRae. Now a great light was flaming in the sky over
their heads, and she saw that his face and hands were black, and his
eyes were closed, though he was breathing. She tore the skirt from
about her head and ran to soak it in water, but when she returned Peter
was kneeling beside his father, and held back the dripping cloth.

"Not water," he said. "We must get--something else. He is burned."

She put her arms about Peter, and his face rested for a moment on her
shoulder. In that moment he told her that Aleck had tricked him, and
had left him on the island. With the aid of a piece of dry driftwood
he had managed to swim ashore, but too late to reach the cabin ahead
of the flames. He found his father halfway to the lake, fighting his
way on hands and knees in the van of the fire. His face and hands were
badly burned, but that was all. Another minute and he would have been
too late. His voice choked, and Mona's hand stroked his face gently,
and she kissed his hot forehead.

Then they carried Donald McRae under the shelter of the cliff, where
they were free from smoke and heat, with the water rippling in and out
among the stones at their feet. And here Mona told Peter of Aleck's
coming to the point, though she kept to herself what happened there,
and that Simon McQuarrie had gone to the island in a sailboat and would
surely come straight to this beach when he found Peter gone. And as
they made Donald easier, and waited in the coolness of the cliff for
the fire-storm to burn itself out, she told him also of Carter and that
no time must be lost in getting away to a place of greater safety.

Peter knew what that meant as he bent over his father. In scarcely
more than a whisper he told Mona. He, too, must go. It would not be
for long--maybe a week, a month, or a little longer. It was not for
himself. He was not afraid of either Aleck or the law, because he had
done at the pool just what he would do again if it were before the eyes
of the whole world. But his father needed him, and never would his
heart beat the same, nor would she ever again look at him with a bit of
the pride and love which made him so strong, if he failed to do what
was right in this hour. Without him his father was lost. He hoped Simon
would come with the boat, for in that boat they would escape into the
wilderness farther west.

Mona made no answer to these things, for it was hard enough for her to
breathe with the thickness that was in her throat. But her hand stroked
Peter's, and her cheek lay against his, and above the grief in her
breast rose a great pride in this man who loved her. And a thought
came to her of Sir Nigel, the chivalrous young knight who looked so
much like this Peter of hers with his sensitive boyish face, and of
how Mary so bravely sent him away to the great wars in which through
long years he rose to undying fame; and she subdued her heart, as Sir
Nigel's sweetheart must have conquered her own, and at last told Peter
it was the thing to do--the one thing to do--and that God and she would
love him for it. And even as she did this there was creeping over her
an unutterable foreboding, and death seemed to pierce her heart when
she heard Simon McQuarrie's boat grounding on the sand. But she smiled,
and kissed Peter--and then Simon stood before them. And in another five
minutes he was gone again--this time to the settlement for the supplies
and medicines which would go with Peter and his father.

For an hour they were alone, and Donald McRae tried to keep back the
moans of pain that came to his lips. But he could not open his eyes,
and Mona fanned him gently with a piece of her wet skirt, and told him
Simon was hurrying with ointments which would make him comfortable.
Peter even laughed and spoke of the sudden on-sweep of the fire as if
it were an exciting adventure, and it was good that Donald could not
see their tense and grief-filled faces in the gloom.

The fire roared through the last of the evergreens and burned itself
out against the bare stone knolls and ledges of the lake shore. And
then came again the sound of Simon's boat on the sand.

"Carter has returned to the settlement and was preparing to come this
way in a boat when I slipped out through the inlet," Simon whispered to
Mona.

With Peter she went to the boat, leaving Simon alone for a few moments
with his old friend. And it was Simon who came at the end of a brief
interval bearing the burden of Peter's father in his arms. Very
tenderly he laid him on the blankets in the boat.

"God be with you, Donald," he whispered, a broken note in his voice.
"God be with you--always."

The stricken man raised a burned hand to the other's face.

"They have always been with me, Simon," he whispered back. "God--and
Helen. And now that you have made such a fine man of Peter I hope I may
go to them--soon."

In the darkness Mona crept out of Peter's arms.

"Peter, you must wait no longer. You must go."

"In a little while I will come back, _Ange_."

"And I--by the sweet spirit of Ste. Anne--I promise to be waiting for
you when you come, Peter--though I wait until new forests grow where
yours and mine have burned. So go--good-by--lover--sweetheart----"

And then she had slipped away from him and he made no effort to follow
her into the smoky gloom, though a sobbing cry came back to him
faintly.

For a moment Simon stood aside with Peter. Their hands gripped in the
darkness and a strain was in the old Scotchman's low voice as he said:

"I've put ointment on your father's face and hands and he is easier.
I don't think he is badly burned. Everything is in the boat,
lad--provisions, blankets, medicines, a pack and what money I had at
hand." He hesitated and the grip of his fingers tightened as he added:
"In the bow is your rifle with extra ammunition in the buckskin sack
beside it. You'll need it. But don't fight the law unless they force
you to it, boy. Remember that. The law finds no excuse, even though
scoundrels like Aleck Curry and blood-sucking ferrets like Carter are
sometimes a part of it. And let me tell you that I saw with my own
eyes when your father killed a man years ago when you were a baby in
your mother's arms. It was for your mother he did it and he was right;
but in spite of that the law won't rest until it lands him. And it's
your job now to beat the law, but without the use of a gun. I love
you, lad--but I'd curse you for a coward if you didn't do what you're
doing now. For years you and Mona have prayed that God would send your
father back to you--and now he has come--and it's God's will behind
it. All that is left in a body that was once stronger than my own is
his worship for you and his memories of your mother. Take care of him,
Peter. And--God bless you both!"

Never had the iron-natured old Scotchman said so much in all the years
since Peter had come to live with him as a son. And without a word
Peter went to the boat, for his throat was thick and choking, and
Simon shoved the craft out into the sea until he was waist-deep in the
water. Simply he said good-by as if Peter were going only to the nets
or the islands outside the mainland, and no tremor in his hard, calm
voice betrayed the tears on his cheeks which darkness hid. And as Peter
raised the sail McQuarrie waded ashore and was met by a pair of arms
and a sobbing voice that cried out in its grief and despair against his
shoulder.

Another sound came before they turned to the cliff trail that led along
the unburned shore of the lake to Five Fingers. From the direction of
the settlement a light skiff bore down swiftly upon the strip of sandy
beach.

Carter, who sat in the stern, was old in the service of the provincial
police, a ferret on the trail, a fox in his cleverness, cold-blooded,
unexcitable and merciless--and when the bow of the skiff ran into the
sand and Aleck Curry leaped ashore he remained quietly in his seat
and waited. In a moment he heard voices--the cold, unemotional voice
of the Scotchman first and then Aleck Curry's in fierce demand and
Mona Guyon's in answer. He went ashore, his thin, hard face smiling
in the darkness, and heard Simon tell Aleck that the law no longer
had a work to do at Five Fingers, for Peter and his father had died
somewhere out in the heart of the fire. He heard Mona's sob, close to
Simon's shoulder. Then he opened his flashlight, but not upon them. It
illumined Aleck's face, thick-lipped and bestial in its disappointment
and passion. What he saw was amusing to a man like Carter and a spark
of chivalry made him leave the others in darkness. But he stepped back
and cast his light upon the wet sand of the shore. And then he said
quite casually, as if his discovery was a matter of small significance:

"You lie, McQuarrie! We have come only a quarter of an hour too late.
Peter McRae and his father have gone in your boat, and as this breath
of wind will scarcely fill a sail, I think Aleck's enthusiasm and a
light skiff should make it possible for us to overtake them within an
hour!"

He chuckled as he switched off his flashlight, and that chuckle was
like the rattle of a snake to Mona, deadlier than all the hate and
animal passion she had seen in Aleck Curry's face in the one swift
moment when it had flashed out of the darkness into light. For Carter
was more than a representative of the law. He was its incarnation, and
more than Aleck Curry--more than any other man in the world--she feared
him now as the skiff sped in the direction taken by Peter and his
father.

CHAPTER XX

For a few minutes after leaving the shore Peter did not trust himself
to speak. He could see nothing but a gray chaos except landward, where
the red sky and the darker blot of the cliff were visible through
the smoke gloom. Even the weather-stained canvas of Simon's boat was
indistinguishable, and where his father lay on a pile of blankets at
his feet he could make out only a shadow. Now that the fire had burned
itself out of the forests between the shore and the ridges the heated
winds gave way quickly to a growing calm. The smoke hung like a dense
fog and with this change came a strange stillness in which sound seemed
to multiply itself until he heard clearly the wailing of a dog at Five
Fingers.

Then the faint rattle of oarlocks came to him and his hand tightened
on the tiller. It was Aleck Curry again--Aleck and the man-hunter,
Carter, hurrying to cut them off before they could leave the shore!
And suddenly in fierce passion he wanted to shout back his defiance to
them just as years ago--three days before he came to Five Fingers--he
had felt the desire to kill the men who had driven his father into the
forest. Something in these moments brought that day back to him--a
vivid memory of the big log behind which they were sheltered, and armed
men in the thickets, the blue jay screeching at them, his thirst and
hunger and his father's pale, strong face waiting with courage for
darkness to come; then the dusk, their escape on a log in the flooded
river and their first fugitive camp in the big woods. How wonderful
his father had been in those hours of peril which he as a boy could
scarcely understand! And now he was lying at his feet, a pitiable wreck
because of that same merciless and unfair law which had pursued him
then----

Peter cried out. It was not much more than a throat sound, as if the
smoke had made him gasp for breath. But a hand rose out of the darkness
and touched him.

"Peter!"

"Yes, dad."

"It has all gone wrong, boy. If only I hadn't been so heartsick to see
you--if I had never come back----"

Peter bent over and his hand rested tenderly against the face which
Simon had cooled with ointment.

"If you hadn't come I'd have lost all faith in the God you used to
tell me about," he whispered. "I wanted to give up but Mona wouldn't
let me. She said you would surely come. And this isn't half as bad as
that day behind the log when I was a little kid. Remember how you cared
for me then--kept me above water when we went into the river, caught
rabbits for me to eat afterward and tucked me into bed every night
near the camp-fire? Well, it's _my_ turn now. And I'm almost glad
you're sick--just so I can show you how much I've grown up since that
afternoon you sent me on alone to Five Fingers so many years ago. You
lied to me then, dad. You made me believe you'd come back that night,
or the next day. Haven't you ever been ashamed of that?"

The strain was gone from his voice. It was his _dad_ he was speaking
to again, his pal and comrade of the old days, and the thrill of that
comradeship was stirring warmly in his blood.

"I knew Simon would give you a good home," said Donald. "And he has
made a splendid man of you. But I'm sorry, Peter--sorry I came back.
After all those years I was hungry to see you. I just wanted to look
on your face and then go away again without letting you know. I didn't
mean to break into your life like this----"

His hand was stroking Peter's and for a moment Peter bent down until
his face was close to his father's. Donald was silent but his hand
continued its caressing touch. After a little he said:

"Did I hear something, Peter?"

"I think it was thunder. A storm must be following in the trail of the
fire."

"I mean out there--near at hand. It was like wood striking on wood."

He sank back and Peter reached down and made his head comfortable.
"This makes me think of that last night in the woods when you tucked me
in my cedar-bough bed and told me to sleep," he whispered gently. "And
I'm telling you that now, dad. It's what you need. Try and sleep!"

Even as he spoke he heard the distant sound again and knew it was the
clank of oarlocks. He fastened the tiller so that Simon's boat was
heading for the open sea. Then he crept forward and returned with a
blanket, and this blanket he quietly unfolded in the darkness, taking
from it the weapon which Simon had loaded and placed there for his use.
And Simon's words were running over and over in his head, as steady as
the ticking of a clock. "Take care of him, Peter. It's your job now to
beat the law."

As the minutes passed it seemed to Peter that sound became a living,
stealthy part of the night, creeping about him in ghostly whispers,
hiding behind the canvas sail, rustling where the water moved under the
bow, purring at his feet and in the air. This impression of sound by
its smallness and its secretiveness served to emphasize the hush which
had fallen upon a burned and blasted world. Its muteness bore with it
a quality of solemnity and a quickening thrill as if subjugated forces
were muffled and bound and might unleash themselves without warning. In
this stillness Peter heard the thunder creeping up faintly behind the
path of fire. But the sound of the oar did not come again.

He strained his eyes to pierce the gloom even though he knew the effort
was futile and senseless. The red line of the fire was steadily
receding. In places it was lost. Where he had left the cliff and the
sandy strip of beach was a black chaos, and it was this darkness with
its silence which seemed to reach into his heart and choke him with its
oppression and foreboding.

Through the stillness a sound came to him, floating softly over the
sea, sweet and distant. His fingers slowly unclasped and he bowed his
head. It was the bell over the little church of logs and Father Albanel
was tolling it. Even now in this smoke-filled hour of the night he was
calling the people of the settlement together that they might offer up
in prayer their gratitude because homes and loved ones had been spared
by the red death that had swept the land. It was like a living voice,
gently sweet and soothing as it brought him faith and reverence. _There
was a God!_ Every fiber in his body leaped to that cry of his heart.
Without a God his father would have died, the whole world would have
burned, there would be no Mona, no hope, no anything for him in the
darkness of the freedom which lay ahead. His lips moved with Mona's
prayer and he stood up quietly so that he might hear more clearly until
the last peal of the bell died away. And when the gray silence shut him
in again he felt as if a protecting spirit had come to ride with him in
the gloom.

Softly he spoke to his father but there was no answer. Exhaustion and
the peace of the open sea had overcome the stricken man and he was
asleep.

Encumbered by stillness and smoke, the night passed with appalling
slowness. The distant thunder with its promise of rain died away. Half
a dozen times Peter lighted matches and looked at his watch. At last it
was three o'clock and the horizon of murk and smoke that shut him in
receded as dawn advanced. Then came a sudden keen breeze, like the last
sweeping of a great broom, and he could see the coast. His own heart
was thrilled by the sight of it, for behind the menacing headland of
barren rock that rose like a great gargoyle hundreds of feet above the
lower cliff was a strip of water which he had once hazarded in a dead
calm and which led back half a mile between towering walls of rock and
naked ridges into that very chaos of wildness which he had wanted for a
hiding-place.

Scarcely had this moment of exultation possessed him when the wind died
again. At the same time a clearer light diffused itself over the sea.
The horizon drew itself back like a curtain and half a mile away he saw
an object that sent his heart into his throat.

For a few moments he neither moved nor seemed to breathe as he stared
at a swiftly approaching skiff. Then he looked at his father. Donald
McRae had not awakened. A livid scar lay across his eyes as if a
red-hot iron had burned out his sight. His hands were blistered, his
lips were swollen and his neck and shoulders were scarred and covered
with the ointment which Simon had used. Yet--even then--_his father
slept_! The horror of it choked Peter and his soul cried out for
vengeance against those who had made this wreck of a man. He turned and
his hand rested upon his rifle. He no longer feared the law or Aleck
Curry or Carter, the ferret. His desire at first was to kill them. With
astonishing calmness he waited, watching the approaching skiff. When it
was two hundred yards away he picked up his rifle.

He chose the small of Aleck's back for his first shot and raised his
gun. In the same moment he observed that with Carter in the stern and
Aleck amidships the bow of the skiff was high out of water. It was this
situation which saved Aleck and Peter's first bullet crashed through
the boat an inch or two below the water line. He followed with two
other shots. The effect was almost instantaneous. Aleck Curry lurched
away from the oars and the skiff came within an ace of upsetting. In
another moment the quick-witted Carter had called Aleck into the stern
and there both crouched, their combined weight raising the shattered
bow above the water line while Carter stripped himself of his shirt.

The shots roused Donald, and with an effort he drew himself up beside
Peter.

"What is it?" he demanded. He turned his scarred face toward Peter and
then with a strange cry covered his face with his hands. "My God, I
can't see!" he cried. "Peter--I can't see!"

In that darkest moment of his life Peter thanked God the wind came
and filled the sail of Simon's boat and that neither Carter nor
Aleck Curry shouted after them or made a sound that his father might
hear, and like an inspiration a lie came to his lips--he had done
some poor shooting at a flock of mallards! He spoke cheerfully of his
father's efforts to see, telling him it would be days before he could
hope for vision when his eyes were swollen and scarred by burns. And
Donald, seeing nothing of the agony in Peter's bloodless face, smiled
cheerfully up at the clearing sky in spite of his pain. He did not
mind so much about his hands, he said, but it was a hardship to have
his eyes covered as Peter was bandaging them now because he wanted
to see as much as he could of his boy in the short time they would
be together. There was a note of happiness in his voice which was in
strange contrast to the pathos of his appearance and his helplessness.

And Peter fought to keep up that spirit of cheer and of gladness that
was in Donald McRae's heart. But his own heart was breaking--for he
knew that his father was blind.

Hours later Simon's boat came stealing back to shore in the sunless
dusk of the evening. This time the sail was down and with muffled
oars Peter rowed cautiously for the break in the cliff. Blended with
the deepening shadows of the sea, he worked his boat into the narrow
maw of the crevasse whose rock walls rose two hundred feet over their
heads. In utter darkness, with the thin streak of light far above,
he felt his way for half an hour. Then the fissure widened and after
another fifteen minutes of slow progress its walls bulged outward,
losing themselves in the gloom, and ahead stretched the hidden inlet,
smothered on all sides by precipitous crags and cliffs and towering
forest ridges.

On a narrow strip of sand he grounded the boat and lighted the lantern
which Simon had placed in the outfit. Its illumination threw up grimly
the black shadows about them, and questing among these, he found huge
masses of torn and twisted rocks so wildly thrown together that among
them were many little caverns and grottoes thickly carpeted with white
sand. One of these he chose for a camp, but not until he had gathered
an armful of bleached driftwood and had started a fire did he return to
the boat. It was then, in the yellow light of flaming cedar and pine,
that he noted a strange and startling change had come over his father.
Donald McRae no longer bore the appearance of a sick man. He stood
straight and was breathing deeply. His lips were smiling as he faced
Peter and quite calmly he removed the bandage from his eyes.

"At last we are home," he spoke softly. "And just beyond you--_I see
your mother_!" Instantly he seemed to sense the shock of those words to
Peter, for he said: "Don't let that frighten you, lad. Every day and
night she is at my side. Only--now--_she is nearer_!"

He reached out his hands and almost fiercely Peter's arms closed about
him.

Donald stroked his hair. It was the old caress, and he spoke to Peter
as if to a little boy again.

"You're not afraid, Peter?" he asked.

"Afraid----"

Peter's heart stopped beating.

"They can't hurt you," said Donald soothingly. "I won't let them do
that, Peter."

Peter drew slowly away. His face was gray in the firelight and in his
eyes was a growing horror. He tried to speak but no words came from his
lips. Donald's scarred face was strangely tranquil. It seemed to Peter
that years had dropped away from it. In it was no fear, no sign of
strain, no consciousness of the terrible hours they had passed through
or of the tragic future which lay ahead. And the truth came to Peter,
a suspicion at first, a whisper, growing and overwhelming him until at
last it was a dizzying sickness that set him swaying on his feet. In
this hour Donald McRae was not the man who had returned after years
of wandering to see his boy. His mind had gone back. It had returned
to the days of Peter's childhood and his voice was repeating words
almost forgotten--a sacred promise of days when Peter had built mighty
castles in the air and his father had helped him plan them with the
understanding smile that was on his lips now.

For he was saying: "They won't hurt a boy, Peter. We'll get away. And
then we'll go through the big woods to the mountains just as we've
always wanted to do."

Peter raised clenched hands to his face to stifle his agony.

In the torturing slowness of the hours which followed Donald McRae
lived again in the precious years when Peter was a boy, recalling
forgotten incidents as if they had happened yesterday, bringing forth
their old dreams, painting their pictures of the future as he had done
so often with Peter at his side in the afterglow of evenings long ago.
And Peter, with his soul torn and bleeding, talked with him. Together
they were hunting again. They followed the old trap-lines. They heard
the song of birds and planted seeds and flowers in the little garden
back of their cabin home, and Peter was kneeling at his father's knees
when he said his prayers at night. These things Peter had dreamed
of and treasured in his years at Five Fingers, but now they were
horrors--coming out of the past with a voice that trembled with the
thrill and joy of a strange madness.

At last Donald slept. It was after midnight and the last embers of the
fire had burned out. Peter rose to his feet and walked up the shore,
staring into darkness. The rock walls that inclosed the inlet rose
sheer above him, making of the place a deep and sombrous pit. He could
see the stars and their distance lent an abysmal solitude to the gloom.
About him was no movement and no stir of life; the water lay still; no
whisper came from dark forests on the ridge tops; the black walls were
dead and in the soft sand his feet alone disturbed the sepulchral quiet.

To Peter this strangeness seemed naturally a part of the change that
had come into his life. Everything was changed. His world had gone into
atoms and now it was reassembling itself; and with deadened emotions,
almost dully, he was beginning to accept it. His yesterdays, it seemed,
had existed an infinitely long time ago. Five Fingers was no longer
home or a necessity and even Mona seemed a vast distance away from
him in these hours when his own soul was remolding itself to fit the
grimness of a new existence. His mind no longer questioned the path he
was to take and no shadow of revolt rose in it.

One thought was as steadfastly fixed in him now as life itself. He
belonged to his father and his father belonged utterly to him. He must
go on with him, care for him, fight for him, save him from that one
dread brutality of the law if his own life paid the forfeit in the end.
That was settled. Even his love for Mona could not change that duty and
older love which urged him. It was more than a resolution; it was as
immutably a part of him as the beating of his heart and his own flesh
and blood.

The stars faded and day broke swiftly above the walls of the inlet. He
returned and found his father on his hands and knees groping in the
sand. He was gathering sticks and placing them with the remnants of
last night's fire, and when he heard Peter's footsteps he paused in his
labor and raised a face out of which once more the years of grief and
hopelessness seemed to have gone.

"Are you hungry, Peter?" he asked.

And Peter, as he knelt beside him, knew that he was speaking to Peter
the boy and not to Peter the man.

Together they built the fire.

CHAPTER XXI

Nine days Peter and his father spent in their hiding-place under the
walls of the lagoon. At the end of that time Donald's burns were
healed and his strength had returned. He had taken on flesh and his
shoulders were straighter. His eyes were clear again but their vision
was strangely shadowed and at a hundred yards the wall of the lagoon
was like a dark curtain. For a time it was impossible for Peter to
believe that his father's mind was not keeping pace with his physical
revivement. Yet with the passing of each day Donald's mental grip
concentrated itself more and more on the past until he seemed not to
have lived at all beyond those years when Peter was a boy. Together
they picked up old threads as if they had never been broken or lost,
and in those occasional dark and brooding intervals when Donald's mind
dragged itself back into the haunting tragedy of the present Peter
found himself praying for the return of that partial amnesia which at
first had terrified him.

On the evening of the ninth day Peter once more set out to sea. Fifty
miles westward he ran ashore in the illusive, gray dusk of morning and
burned Simon's boat.

Now that their flight northward had actually begun there were moments
when his father's attitude almost frightened him. At first Donald's
mind was keenly alive to the nearness of danger and in his half
blindness he became more watchful and alert than Peter. But it was the
peril of years ago that haunted him--the menace of the men who had
driven them from their cabin home and who had nearly killed them when
Peter was a boy.

After the third day Peter began to mark the beginning of the final
change in his father. Donald became less watchful and sounds no longer
seemed to disturb him. Instincts which warned him of peril became
ghosts and at last faded away entirely. By the end of the seventh day
there remained only one consciousness of living in Donald's soul; Peter
was his little boy, and he was with Peter. Physically he betrayed no
sign that his mind had crumbled. His scarred eyes, in which vision
had grown even dimmer, held in them a deep and abiding clearness and
a strange gentleness grew in his face. And Peter, holding tight to
keep his own heart from breaking, knew what it meant. His father was
forgetful of all things now but his boy, and was happy.

This change more than anything else killed in Peter's breast his last
hope of returning to Five Fingers. Sheer madness with its darkness and
its misery might have driven him back to Simon and Father Albanel,
taking Donald McRae to asylum doors instead of to the hangman. But
this which he saw growing in his father was to him a quietly working
miracle of God instead of breaking down of body and soul and brain.

As day followed day and one cool, dark night added itself to another,
a warm and thrilling reaction came to replace with new emotions the
gloom and desolation in his heart. Not for an hour did he stop thinking
of Mona; her face was with him, her voice, the touch of her lips and
hands; she walked with him in the thick aisles of the forest, slept
near his side at night, wakened with him in the morning and became in
each increasing hour of their separation more completely a part of
him. But with this thought of her returned also the old passion of his
childhood--his love for his father. His heart stirred strangely to the
gentle caress of Donald's hand as it had thrilled when he was a boy.
The old chumship rose out of its ashes, smoldered for a while and then
burned steadily as if the broken years had never been. Home, mother,
father, all the joys and dreams of childhood and early boyhood crept
upon him a little at a time, until at last he knew that to sacrifice
his father was as unthinkable as to surrender that part of his heart
which Mona filled.

Between these two loves, encouraged on one side by duty and on the
other by desire, lay his grief. Until the end of the third week he did
not give up fully his resolution to send word back to Mona. By that
time the hazard of such an act had fully impressed itself upon him. He
no longer feared Aleck Curry, whose stupidity he had fully measured,
but almost as frequently as Mona filled his mind came also dread of
Carter. A cold and abiding fear of this man entered into him and he was
confident it would not be long before this human ferret of the forests
would in some way find their trail. At times he was oppressed by the
feeling that Carter was close behind them and he tried to establish
in his mind the certainty of his action if his father's enemy should
suddenly appear. Thought of what might happen--what probably would
happen--made him shudder. For there could be no halfway measures with
Carter now.

Always on the alert, with his rifle never far from reach of his hands,
he swung still farther north and west. Autumn found him in the Dubaunt
River country, and the beginning of winter on the Thelon. Here he
traded his watch in a Dogrib camp for a score of traps, blankets and
new moccasins, invested the last of his money in flour, sugar, salt
and tea, and took possession of an abandoned cabin in the neighborhood
of Hinde Lake. All through the winter he trapped and set deadfalls and
snares.

A hundred times during the long winter he fought against his desire to
send a word to Mona. Months had not dulled his caution and as soon as
the spring break-up made it possible to travel he led his father into
the Artillery Lake country. Through the spring and early summer they
were constantly on the move, always making a little southward. By the
time August came they had completed two-thirds of an immense circle
and south of the Athabasca country found themselves in the unmapped
region between the Cree River and the McFarland. Here, in a country of
ridges and swamps and deep forests, Peter made up his mind that at last
they were safely hidden from Carter and all the rest of the world.

He breathed easier and began the building of a cabin. This was on a
dark-watered, silent little stream, with a vast swamp at their back
door, ridge country to right and left of them and an illimitable forest
reaching out in front. The nearest point of habitation that Peter knew
of was a Hudson's Bay Company post sixty miles away.

And this cabin with each log that went into it became a closer and more
inseparable part of Donald McRae. Out of that forgetfulness which could
scarcely be called madness began to creep memories so warm and vivid
that they seemed to breathe with life itself. For Donald was building
the old home again, the home of Peter's mother, where the moon had
looked in through the window on the night he was born--a home, sweet
and whispering with the presence of a woman one had worshiped in the
flesh and the other had visioned as an angel in his dreams. After a
little it was Donald and not Peter who was building the cabin, and by
the time it was finished it seemed to Peter that a strange and unseen
spirit of life, gentle as prayer itself, had come to dwell in it with
them.

Autumn came again with its paradise of color. The cedars, spruces and
balsams took on a deeper, richer green; each sunrise bathed the ridges
of poplar and birch in new splendor of red and yellow and gold; the
nights grew colder, the days were filled more and more with the autumn
tang that made blood run red and warm. God was with them here. Donald
said that, as in the days of old. And Peter began to believe--and
as faith rose in him hope and dreams returned. _Mona's prayer was
answered_--the prayer they had said together for years asking that his
father might be returned to him, and that they might all find refuge
together somewhere in the wilderness world which they loved. And this
was the refuge, given to them through the sweet and charitable guidance
of God. All that was needed to complete it was Mona.

He began to thrill with a greater excitement as the first snows came.
Would it be safe to return for Mona _now_? There were times when his
whole soul cried out in the affirmative and he was almost ready to
begin the long journey. But his caution never quite died and he always
pulled himself back in time. Sixteen months had seemed an eternity to
him but prudence warned him not to hurry. He would wait until spring.
By that time, if Carter were on their trail, the climax would surely
come. If the winter passed safely, he would go to Five Fingers and
bring Mona back with him. Not for a moment did he doubt she would
come, and he continued to add to the glorious castles he built in his
mind, shadowed only now and then by oppressing thoughts of the many
things which might have happened at Five Fingers in almost two years of
absence.

Late in February he left for the trading-post with two Indian dogs and
a light toboggan to sell his furs. It was not unusual now for Donald
to remain alone for several days at a time, for Peter knew the home
they had built had become a part of his heart and soul and that nothing
short of actual force or his own wishes and plans could drag his father
from it. On this trip to the post he expected to be gone five days.

It was very cold. Trees cracked and snapped with the piercing bite of
the frost and the snow crackled underfoot. For a long time after Peter
had disappeared Donald stood in the little clearing staring over the
trail where his boy had gone.

Something unknown to Peter was finding its way into Donald's brain.
Through the night it had worked, gnawing its way slowly and stealthily,
and now that Peter was gone it grew bolder. Even as he turned the cabin
took on a new aspect for Donald. Though the sun was shining and the sky
was clear, a shadow seemed to have fallen over it and the welcoming
spirit which had always clasped him closely to its heart was missing
when he entered through the door. As the day passed a change came in
Donald's face. He was restless and uneasy. Sounds startled him again.
In the dusk of evening he did not light a candle but sat quietly in a
corner, staring into darkness with his half-blind eyes, and all that
night he did not go to bed.

The next day there was no sun; the sky was heavy with gloom, the air
thick and difficult for Donald to breathe. Mysterious shadows crept
about him and at times he tried futilely to seize these with his hands.
As the hours passed his mind became more and more like a broken limb
from which the last prop had been taken. A hundred times he whispered
Peter's name. Then came the beginning of the storm. It broke in
mid-afternoon and by night was a howling blizzard. In darkness the
cabin shook and the wind screamed overhead and the snow beat like shot
against the window. It would be a long time before the forest people
would forget this storm because of its ferocity and the tragedy which
it left in its wake, but to Donald it was more than a storm--it was a
personal thing. In it was the cumulative chaos of all the evils from
which he had been a fugitive through the years, and now, cornering him
at last, they were fighting to break through the log walls of the cabin.

He built up the fire until it roared in the chimney and lighted candles
until the cabin was aflame with light. And then, suddenly as a bolt
of lightning, some thing came to him. It was _voice_--voice screaming
at the window, voice howling over the roof logs, voice moaning and
wailing and dying away in the sweeping of the wind. "_Peter!_ _Peter!_
_Peter!_" It was crying--nothing but Peter's name, repeating it a
thousand times in its laughing, taunting, moaning efforts to make him
understand.

A half-savage cry rose out of his breast. He was not afraid, not when
his boy needed him--and hatless and coatless he flung up the birchwood
bar to the door and faced the storm.

"_Peter!_" he called. "_Peter!_ _Peter!_"

It all had but one meaning for Donald now. The storm had Peter. It
was playing with him, killing him, and these devils in the wind had
come to tell him about it in their glee. He could feel them clawing
and striking at his breast and face; the snow struck his eyes like
tiny spear points and he found it difficult to get his breath in the
face of the blast which tried to overwhelm him. He called again as he
fought his way out into the blackness and snow. His words drifted away
in shreds, whipped to pieces by the wind. Creatures seemed picking up
handfuls of snow and hurling it in his face--he could hear their swift
movement, the hissing of their breath, their evasion as he struck out
at them, and he called Peter's name louder than before to give his boy
courage and let him know he was coming.

That Peter was near the cabin, that he had turned back and was making a
desperate fight to reach its shelter was as firmly a part of Donald's
mind as the conviction that all the forces of the darkness and evil
were trying to keep him away from his boy.

His head was bare and his woolen shirt was unbuttoned at the throat,
but he did not sense the terrible cold that came with the blizzard.
Among the trees his feet found instinctively the beginning of the
trail that was blazed through the forest and he reached out his naked
hands and plunged knee-deep through windrows of snow that lay in his
way. The thickets whipped and beat at him and branches, ambushed in
darkness, reached out from twisting trees to strike him, but he did not
feel sting or pain.

At last he was sure he heard an answer to his calling but the wind came