upon it as a drowning man might grip at a floating sea-weed.  Yet was the under-current of hope so persistent that at times it was near faith.  Up to this hour Yellow Bird’s sorcery had brought him nothing but the truth.  For him she had conjured the spirits of her people, and these spirits, speaking through Yellow Bird’s lips, had saved him from Cassidy at the fishing camp and had performed the miracle on the shore of Wollaston and had predicted the salvation that had come to him out on the Barren.  And so—­was it not conceivable that the other would also come true?

But these visions came to him only in flashes.  As he traveled through the hours the one vital desire of his being was to bring himself physically into the presence of Nada, to feel the wild joy of her in his arms once more, the crush of her lips to his, the caress of her hands in their old sweet way at his face—­and to hear her voice, the girl’s voice with the woman’s soul behind it, crying out its undying love, as he had last heard it that night in the Missioner’s cabin many months ago.  After this had happened, then—­if fate decreed it so—­all other things might end.  Breault, the Ferret, might come.  Or Porter.  Or that Somebody Else who was always on his trail.  If the game finished thus, he would be satisfied.

When he stopped to make a pot of black tea and warm a snack to eat Jolly Roger tried to explain this new meaning of life to Peter.

“The big thing we must do is to get there—­safely,” he said, already beginning to make plans in the back of his head.  And then he went on, building up his fabric of new hope before Peter, while he crunched his luncheon of toasted bannock and fat bacon.  There was something joyous and definite in his voice which entered into Peter’s blood and body.  There was even a note of excitement in it, and Peter’s whiskers bristled with fresh courage and his eyes gleamed and his tail thumped the snow comprehendingly.  It was like having a master come back to him from the dead.

And Jolly Roger even laughed, softly, under his breath.

“This is February,” he said.  “We ought to make it late in March.  I mean Cragg’s Ridge, Pied-Bot.”

After that they went on, traveling hard to reach their cabin before the darkness of night, which would drop upon them like a thick blanket at four o’clock.  In these last hours there pressed even more heavily upon Jolly Roger that growing realization of the vastness and emptiness of the world.  It was as if blindness had dropped from his eyes and he saw the naked truth at last.  Out of this world everything had emptied itself until it held only Nada.  Only she counted.  Only she held out her arms to him, entreating him to keep for her that life in his body which meant so little in all other ways.  He thought of one of the little worn books which he carried in his shoulder-pack—­Jeanne D’Arc.  As she had fought, with the guidance of God, so he believed the blue-eyed girl down at Cragg’s Ridge was fighting for him, and had sent her spirit out in quest of him.  And he was going back to her.  Going!