A wan smile came over Cassidy’s lips, and then he moaned again, and his eyes closed.  The girl thrust Jolly Roger back.

“No—­you better not go far, an’ you better wait,” she said, and there was an unspoken thing in the dark glow of her eyes that made him think of Nada on that day when she told him how Jed Hawkins had struck her in the cabin at Cragg’s Ridge.

That night Jolly Roger made his camp close to the mouth of the Limping Moose.  And for three days thereafter his trail led only between this camp and the cabin of old Robert Baron and his granddaughter, Giselle.  All this time Cassidy was telling things in a fever.  He talked a great deal about Jolly Roger.  And the girl, nursing him night and day, with scarcely a wink of sleep between, came to believe they had been great comrades, and had been inseparable for a long time.  Even then she would not let McKay take her place at Cassidy’s side.  The third day she started him off for a post sixty miles away to get a fresh supply of bandages and medicines.

It was evening, three days later, when Jolly Roger and Peter returned.  The windows of the cabin were brightly lighted, and McKay came up to one of these windows and looked in.  Cassidy was bolstered up in his cot.  He was very much alive, and on the floor at his side, sitting on a bear rug, was the girl.  A lump rose in Jolly Roger’s throat.  Quietly he placed the bundle which he had brought from the post close up against the door, and knocked.  When Giselle opened it he had disappeared into darkness, with Peter at his heels.

The next morning he found old Robert and said to him: 

“I’m restless, and I’m going to move a little.  I’ll be back in two weeks.  Tell Cassidy that, will you?”

Ten minutes later he was paddling up the shore of Wollaston, and for a week thereafter he haunted the creeks and inlets, always on the move.  Peter saw him growing thinner each day.  There was less and less of cheer in his voice, seldom a smile on his lips, and never did his laugh ring out as of old.  Peter tried to understand, and Jolly Roger talked to him, but not in the old happy way.

“We might have finished him, an’ got rid of him for good,” he said to Peter one chilly night beside their campfire.  “But we couldn’t, just like we couldn’t have brought Nada up here with us.  And we’re going back.  I’m going to keep that promise.  We’re going back, Peter, if we hang for it!”

And Jolly Roger’s jaw would set grimly as he measured the time between.

The tenth day came and he set out for the mouth of the Canoe River.  On the afternoon of the twelfth he paddled slowly into Limping Moose Creek.  Without any reason he looked at his watch when he started for old Robert’s cabin.  It was four o’clock.  He was two days ahead of his promise, and there was a bit of satisfaction in that.  There was an odd thumping at his heart.  He had faith in Cassidy, a belief that the Irishman would call their affair a draw, and tell him to take another chance in the big open.  He was the sort of man to live up to the letter of a wager, when it was honestly made.  But, if he didn’t—­