and Peter felt him growing rigid as stone, and for
many moments Jolly Roger's body seemed as lifeless as that of the man
who lay with up-turned face in the trail. Then he fumbled in a pocket
and found a pencil and an old envelope. And on the envelope, with the
darkness so thick he could not see his hand, he scribbled, "I killed
Jed Hawkins," and after that he signed his name firmly and fully--"Jolly
Roger McKay."

Then he tucked the envelope under Jed Hawkins' body, where the rain
could not get at it. And after that, to make the evidence complete, he
covered the dead man's face with his coat.

"We've got to do it, Peter," he said, and there was a new note in his
voice as he stood up on his feet again. "We've got to do it--for her.
We'll--tell her we caught Jed Hawkins in the trail and killed him."

Caution, cleverness, his old mental skill returned to him. He dragged
the boot-legger's body to a new spot, turned it face down, threw the
club away, and kicked up the earth with his boots to give signs of a
struggle.

The note in his voice was triumph--triumph in spite of its
heartbreak--as he turned back over the trail after he had finished, and
spoke to Peter.

"We may have done some things we oughtn't to, Pied-Bot," he said, "but
tonight I sort o' think we've tried to make--restitution. And if they
hang us, which they probably will some time, I sort o' think it'll make
us happy to know we've done it--for her. Eh, Pied-Bot?"

And the moon sailed out for a space, and shone on the dead whiteness
of Jolly Roger's face. And on the lips of that face was a strange, cold
smile, a smile of mastery, of exaltation, and the eyes were looking
straight ahead--the eyes of a man who had made his sacrifice for a thing
more precious to him than his God.

Only now and then did the moon gleam through the slow-moving masses of
black cloud when he came to the edge of the Indian settlement clearing
three miles away, where stood the cabin of the Missioner. The storm had
not broken, but seemed holding back its forces for one mighty onslaught
upon the world. The thunder was repressed, and the lightning held in
leash, with escaping flashes of it occasionally betraying the impending
ambuscades of the sky.

The clearing itself was a blot of stygian darkness, with a yellow patch
of light in the center of it--the window of the Missioner's cabin. And
Jolly Roger stood looking at it for a space, as a carven thing of rock
might have stared. His