And it was, in fact, a madness of despair eating out the life in Jolly Roger’s heart.  For he no longer had hope Nada had escaped the fire, even though at no place had he found a conclusive evidence of her death.  But that signified little, for there were many of the missing who had not been found between the last of September and these days of May.  What he did find, with deadly regularity, was the fact that Father John had escaped—­and that he had traveled to safety alone.

And Father Augustine told him that when Father John stopped to rest for a few days at the Mission he was heading north, for somewhere on Pashkokogon Lake near the river Albany.

There was little rest for Peter and his master at Fort William town.  That Breault must be close on their trail, and following it with the merciless determination of the ferret from which he had been named, there was no shadow of doubt in the mind of Jolly Roger McKay.  So after outfitting his pack at a little corner shop, where Breault would be slow to enquire about him, he struck north through the bush toward Dog Lake and the river of the same name.  Five or six days, he thought, would bring him to Father John and the truth which he dreaded more and more to hear.

The despondency of his master had sunk, in some mysterious way, into the soul of Peter.  Without the understanding of language he sensed the oppressive gloom of tragedy behind and about him and there was a wolfish slinking in the manner of his travel now, and his confidence was going as he caught the disease of despair of the man who traveled with him.  But constantly and vigilantly his eyes and scent were questing about them, suspicious of the very winds that whispered in the treetops.  And at night after they had built their little cooking fire in the deepest heart of the bush he would lie half awake during the hours of darkness, the watchfulness of his senses never completely dulled in the stupor of sleep.

Since the night they had stopped at the settler’s cabin Jolly Roger’s face had grown grayer and thinner.  A number of times he had tried to assure himself what he would do in that moment which was coming when he would stand face to face with Breault the man-hunter.  His caution, after he left Fort William, was in a way an automatic instinct that worked for self-preservation in face of the fact that he was growing less and less concerned regarding Breault’s appearance.  It was not in his desire to delay the end much longer.  The chase had been a long one, with its thrills and its happiness at times, but now he was growing tired and with Nada gone there was only hopeless gloom ahead.  If she were dead he wanted to go to her.  That thought was a dawning pleasure in his breast, and it was warm in his heart when he tied in a hard knot the buckskin string which locked the flap of his pistol holster.  When Breault overtook him the law would know, because of the significance of this knot, that he had welcomed the end of the game.