After that one sobbing cry he tore like a madman dawn into the valley, traveling swiftly through the muck of fire and under-foot tangle with Peter fighting behind him.  Half an hour later he stood where the Missioner’s cabin had been and he found only a ruin of ash and logs burned down to the earth.  Where the trail had run there was no longer a trail.  A blight, grim and sickening, lay upon the earth that had been paradise.

Peter heard the choking sound in his master’s throat and chest.  He, too, sensed the black shadow of tragedy and cautiously he sniffed the air, knowing that at last they were home—­and yet it was not home.  Instinctively he had faced Cragg’s Ridge and Jolly Roger, seeing the dog’s stiffened body pointing toward the break beyond which lay Nada’s old home, felt a thrill of hope leap up within him.  Possibly the farther plain had escaped the scourge of fire.  If so, Nada would be there, and the Missioner—­

He started for the break, a mile away.  As he came nearer to it his hope grew less for he could see where the flames had swept in an inundating sea along Cragg’s Ridge.  They passed over the meadow where the thick young jackpines, the red strawberries and the blue violets had been and Peter heard the strange sob when they came to the little hollow—­the old trysting place where Nada had first given herself into his master’s arms.  And there it was that Peter forgot master and caution and sped swiftly ahead to the break that cut the Ridge in twain.

When Jolly Roger came to that break and ran through it he was staggering from the mad effort he had made.  And then, all at once, the last of his wind came in a cry of gladness.  He swayed against a rock and stood there staring wild-eyed at what was before him.  The world was as black ahead of him as it was behind.  But Jed Hawkins’ cabin was untouched!  The fire had crept up to its very door and there it had died.

He went on the remaining hundred yards and before the closed door of Nada’s old home he found Peter standing stiff-legged and strange.  He opened the door and a damp chill touched his face.  The cabin was empty.  And the gloom and desolation of a grave filled the place.

He stepped in, a moaning whisper of the truth coming to his lips.  He heard the scurrying flight of a starved wood-rat, a flutter of loose papers, and then the silence of death fell about him.  The door of Nada’s little room was open and he entered through it.  The bed was naked and there remained only the skeleton of things that had been.

He moved now like a man numbed by a strange sickness and Peter followed gloomily and silently in the footsteps of his master.  They went outside and a distance away Jolly Roger saw a thing rising up out of the char of fire, ugly and foreboding, like the evil spirit of desolation itself.  It was a rude cross made of saplings, up which the flames had licked their way, searing it grim and black.