killed Jed Hawkins to save YOU. But man will not
forgive. The law has been hunting him because he is an outlaw, and to
outlawry he has added what the law will call murder. But God will not
look at it in that way. He will look into the heart of the man, the man
who sacrificed himself--"

And then, fiercely, Nada struck up the Missioner's comforting hand, and
Peter saw her young face white as star-dust in the lampglow.

"I don't care what God thinks," she cried passionately. "God didn't do
right today. Mister Roger told me everything, that he was an outlaw, an'
I oughtn't to marry him. But I didn't care. I loved him. I could hide
with him. An' we were coming to have you marry us tonight when God let
Jed Hawkins drag me away, to sell me to a man over on the railroad--an'
it was God who let Mister Roger go back and kill him. I tell you He
didn't do right! He didn't--he didn't--because Mister Roger brought me
the first happiness I ever knew, an' I loved him, an' he loved me--an'
God was wicked to let him kill Jed Hawkins--"

Her voice cried out, a woman's soul broken in a girl's body, and Peter
whimpered and watched the Missioner as he raised Nada to her feet
and went with her into his bedroom, where a few minutes before he had
lighted a lamp. And Peter crept in quietly after them, and when the
Missioner had gone and closed the door, leaving them alone in their
tragedy, Nada seemed to see him for the first time and slowly she
reached out her arms.

"Peter!" she whispered. "Peter--Peter--"

In the minutes that followed, Peter could feel her heart beating.
Clutched against her breast he looked up at the white, beautiful face,
the trembling throat, the wide-open blue eyes staring at the one black
window between them and the outside night. A lull had come in the storm.
It was quiet and ominous stillness, and the ticking of a clock, old and
gray like the Missioner himself, filled the room. And Nada, seated on
the edge of Father John's bed, no longer looked like the young girl of
"seventeen goin' on eighteen." That afternoon, in the hidden jackpine
open, with its sweet-scented jasmines, its violets and its crimson
strawberries under their feet, the soul of a woman had taken possession
of her body. In that hour the first happiness of her life had come to
her. She had heard Jolly Roger McKay tell her those things which she
already knew--that he was an outlaw, and that he was hiding down on
the near-edge of civilization because