But they never could rid themselves of Yellow Bird, no matter how fast they ran or where they tried to hide.  From somewhere Yellow Bird’s dark eyes would look out at them, and finally, laughing at his own discomfiture, he drew Nada down beside him in a little fen, white and yellow and blue with wildflowers, and boldly took her head in his arms and kissed her—­with Yellow Bird looking at them from behind a banksian clump twenty feet away.  So real was the kiss, and so real the warm pressure of Nada’s slim arms about his neck that he awoke with a glad cry—­and sat up to find the dawn had come.

For a few moments he sat stupidly, looking about him as if not quite believing the unreality of it all.  Then with Peter he went down to the edge of the lake.

All that day Peter sensed a quiet change in his master.  Jolly Roger did not talk.  He did not whistle or laugh, but moved quietly when he moved at all, with a set, strange look in his face.  He was making his last big fight against the desire to return to Cragg’s Ridge.  Yellow Bird’s predictions, and her warning, had no influence with him now.  He was thinking of Nada alone.  She was back there, waiting for him, praying for his return, ready and happy to become a fugitive with him—­to accept her chances of life or death, of happiness or grief, in his company.  A dozen times the determination to return for her almost won.  But each time came the other picture—­a vision of ceaseless flight, of hiding, of hunger and cold and never ending hardship, and at the last, inevitable as the dawning of another day—­prison, and possibly the hangman.

Not until late that afternoon did Peter see the old Jolly Roger in the face of his master.  And Jolly Roger said: 

“We’ve made up our mind, Pied-Bot.  We can’t go back.  We’ll hit north and spend the winter along the edge of the Barren Lands.  It’s the biggest country I know of, and if Cassidy comes—­”

He shrugged his shoulders grimly.

In half an hour they had started, with the sun beginning to sink in the west.

For two days Jolly Roger and Peter paddled their way slowly up the eastern shore of Wollaston.  That he had correctly analyzed the mental arguments which would guide Cassidy in his pursuit Jolly Roger had little doubt.  He would keep to the west shore, and up through the Hatchet Lake and Black River waterways, as his quarry had never failed to hit straight for the farther north in time of peril.  Meanwhile Jolly Roger had decided to make his way without haste up the east shore of Wollaston, and paddle north and east through the Du Brochet and Thiewiaza River waterways.  If these courses were followed, each hour would add to the distance between them, and when the way was safe they would head straight for the Barren Lands.