was pounding
at the door with the wind, and who was filling the black night with its
menace and fear. He hated this man, who lay back in the trail with his
lifeless face turned up to the deluge that poured out of the sky. And he
was afraid of the man, even as he hated him, and he believed that Nada
was afraid of him, and that because of her fear she was crying there
in the middle of the floor, with Father John patting her shoulder
and stroking her hair, and saying things to her which he could not
understand. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to feel himself close
against her, as Nada had held him so often in those hours when she had
unburdened her grief and her unhappiness to him. But even stronger than
this desire was the one to follow his master.

He went to the door, and thrust his nose against the crack at the bottom
of it. He felt the fierceness of the wind fighting to break in, and the
broken mist of it filled his nostrils. But there came no scent of Jolly
Roger McKay. For a moment he struggled at the crack with his paws. Then
he flopped himself down, his heart beating fast, and fixed his eyes
inquiringly on Nada and the Missioner.

His four and a half months of life in the big wilderness, and his weeks
of constant comradeship with Jolly Roger, had developed in him a brain
that was older than his body. No process of reasoning could impinge
upon him the fact that his master was an outlaw, but with the swift
experiences of tragedy and hiding and never-ceasing caution had come
instinctive processes which told him almost as much as reason. He knew
something was wrong tonight. It was in the air. He breathed it. It
thrilled in the crash of thunder, in the lightning fire, in the mighty
hands of the wind rocking the cabin and straining at the windows. And
vaguely the knowledge gripped him that the dead man back in the trail
was responsible for it all, and that because of this something that
had happened his mistress was crying and his master was gone. And he
believed he should also have gone with Jolly Roger into the blackness
and mystery of the storm, to fight with him against the one creature in
all the world he hated--the dead man who lay back in the thickness of
gloom between the forest walls.

And the Missioner was saying to Nada, in a quiet, calm voice out of
which the tragedies of years had burned all excitement and passion:

"God will forgive him, my child. In His mercy He will forgive Roger
McKay, because he