He hesitated, and then lashed himself on to the truth.

“You’ll hate me when I tell you, Nada.  You think Jed Hawkins is bad.  But the law thinks I’m worse.  The police want me.  They’ve wanted me for years.  That’s why I came down here, and hid over in Indian Tom’s cabin—­near where I first met you.  I thought they wouldn’t find me away down here, but they did.  That’s why Peter and I moved over to the big rock-pile at the end of the Ridge.  I’m—­an outlaw.  I’ve done a lot of bad things—­in the eyes of the law, and I’ll probably die with a bullet in me, or in jail.  I’m sorry, but that don’t help.  I’d give my life to be able to tell you what’s in my heart.  But I can’t.  It wouldn’t be square.”

He wondered why no change came into the steady blue of her eyes as he went on with the truth.  The pallor was gone from her cheeks.  Her lips seemed redder, and what he was saying did not seem to startle her, or frighten her.

“Don’t you understand, Nada?” he cried.  “I’m bad.  The police want me.  I’m a fugitive—­always running away, always hiding—­an outlaw—­”

She nodded.

“I know it, Mister Roger,” she said quietly.  “I heard you tell Peter that a long time ago.  And Mister Cassidy was at our place the day after you and Peter ran away from Indian Tom’s cabin, and I showed him the way to Father John’s, and he told me a lot about you, and he told Father John a lot more, and it made me awful proud of you, Mister Roger—­and I want to go with you and Peter!”

“Proud!” gasped Jolly Roger.  “Proud, of me—­”

She nodded again.

“Mister Cassidy—­the policeman—­he used just the word you used a minute ago.  He said you was square, even when you robbed other people.  He said he had to get you in jail if he could, but he hoped he never would.  He said he’d like to have a man like you for a brother.  And Peter loves you.  And I—­”

The color came into her white face.

“I’m goin’ with you and Peter,” she finished.

Something came to relieve the tenseness of the moment for Jolly Roger.  Peter, nosing in a thick patch of bunch-grass, put out a huge snowshoe rabbit, and the two crashed in a startling avalanche through the young jackpines, Peter’s still puppyish voice yelling in a high staccato as he pursued.  Jolly Roger turned from Nada, and stared where they had gone.  But he was seeing nothing.  He knew the hour of his mightiest fight had come.  In the reckless years of his adventuring he had more than once faced death.  He had starved.  He had frozen.  He had run the deadliest gantlets of the elements, of beast, and of man.  Yet was the strife in him now the greatest of all his life.  His heart thumped.  His brain was swirling in a vague and chaotic struggle for the mastery of things, and as he fought with himself—­his unseeing eyes fixed on the spot where Peter and the snowshoe rabbit had disappeared—­he heard Nada’s voice behind him, saying again that she was going with