lessons of sacrifice, of courage and achievement,
of loyalty, honor and dishonor--and of the crashing tragedy which comes
always with the last supreme egoism and arrogance of man. He marked the
dividing lines, and applied them to himself. And he told Peter of his
conclusions. He felt a consuming tenderness for the glorious Margaret of
Anjou, and his heart thrilled one day when a voice seemed to whisper to
him out of the printed page that Nada was another Margaret--only more
wonderful because she was not a princess and a queen.

"The only difference," he explained to Peter, "is that Margaret
sacrificed and fought and died for a king, and our Nada is willing to
do all that for a poor beggar of an outlaw. Which makes Margaret a
second-rater compared with Nada," he added. "For Margaret wanted a
kingdom along with her husband, and Nada would take--just you and me.
And that's where we're pulling some Peter the Great stuff," he tried to
laugh. "We won't let her do it!"

And so they went on, day after day, toward the Wollaston waterways--the
country of Yellow Bird and her people.

It was early September when they crossed the Geikie and struck up the
western shore of Wollaston Lake. The first golden tints were ripening in
the canoe-birch leaves, and the tremulous whisper of autumn was in the
rustle of the aspen trees. The poplars were yellowing, the ash were
blood red with fruit, and in cool, dank thickets wild currants were
glossy black and lusciously ripe. It was the season which Jolly Roger
loved most of all, and it was the beginning of Peter's first September.
The days were still hot, but at night there was a bracing something in
the air that stirred the blood, and Peter found a sharp, new note in the
voices of the wild. The wolf howled again in the middle of the night.
The loon forgot his love-sickness, and screamed raucous defiance at the
moon. The big snowshoes were no longer tame, but wary and alert, and the
owls seemed to slink deeper into darkness and watch with more cunning.
And Jolly Roger knew the human masters of the wilderness were returning
from the Posts to their cabins and trap-lines, and he advanced with
still greater caution. And as he went, watching for smoke and listening
for sound, he began to reflect upon the many changes which five
years might have produced among Yellow Bird's people. Possibly other
misfortunes had come, other winters of hunger and pestilence, scattering
and destroying the tribe. It m