“Jed Hawkins didn’t do it,” said Nada, knowing what was in his mind.  “It was Jed’s woman.  And you can’t kill her!” she added a little defiantly.

Jolly Roger caught the choking throb in her throat, and he knew she was lying.  But Nada thrust Peter from her lap, and stood up, and she seemed taller and more like a woman than ever before in her life as she faced Jolly Roger there in the tiny open, with violets and buttercups and red strawberries in the soft grass under their feet.  And behind them, and very near, a rival to the warbler in the meadow began singing.  But Nada did not hear.  The color had rushed hot into her cheeks at first, but now it was fading out as swiftly, and her hands trembled, clasped in front of her.  But the blue in her eyes was as steady as the blue in the sky as she looked at Jolly Roger.

“I’m not going back to Jed Hawkins’ any more, Mister Roger,” she said.

A soft breath of wind lifted the tress of hair from her forehead, revealing more clearly the mark of Jed Hawkins’ brutality, and Nada saw gathering in Jolly Roger’s eyes that cold, steely glitter which always frightened her when it came.  His hands clenched, and when she reached out and touched his arm the flesh of it was as hard as white birch.  Even in her fear there was glory in the thought that at a word from her he would kill the man who had struck her.  Her fingers crept up his arm, timidly, and the blue in her eyes darkened, and there was a pleading tremble in the curve of her lips as she looked straight at him.

“I’m not going back,” she repeated.

Jolly Roger, looking beyond her, saw the significance of the bundle.  His eyes met her steady gaze again, and his heart seemed to swell in his chest, and choke him.  He tried to let his tense muscles relax.  He tried to smile.  He struggled to bring up the courage which would make possible the confession he had to make.  And Peter, sitting on his haunches in a patch of violets, watched them both, wondering what was going to happen between these two.

“Where are you going?” Jolly Roger asked.

Nada’s fingers had crept almost to his shoulder.  They were twisting at his flannel shirt nervously, but not for the tenth part of a second did she drop her eyes, and that strange, wonderful something which he saw looking at him so clearly out of her soul brought the truth to Jolly Roger, before she had spoken.

“I’m goin’ with you and Peter.”

The low cry that came from Jolly Roger was almost a sob as he stepped back from her.  He looked away from her—­at Peter.  But her pale face, her parted red lips, her wide-open, wonderful eyes, her radiant hair stirred by the wind—­came between them.  She was no longer the little girl—­“past seventeen, goin’ on eighteen.”  To Jolly Roger she was all that the world held of glorious womanhood.

“But—­you can’t!” he cried desperately.  “I’ve come to tell you things, Nada.  I’m not fit.  I’m not what you think I am.  I’ve been livin’ a lie—­”