aused him no uneasiness. Now that Jed Hawkins
was dead Nada would be with the little old Missioner in whose care
he had left her, and not for an instant did a doubt cloud the growing
happiness of his anticipations. Breault and the hunters of the law were
the one worry that lay ahead and behind him. If he outwitted them he
would find Nada waiting for him.

Day after day they kept south and west until they struck the Thelon; and
then through a country unmapped, and at times terrific in its cold
and storm, they fought steadily to the frozen regions of the Dubawnt
waterways. Only once in the first three weeks did they seek human
company. This was at a small Indian camp where Jolly Roger bartered for
caribou meat and moccasins for Peter's feet. Twice between there and
God's Lake they stopped at trappers' cabins.

It was early in March when they struck the Lost Lake country, three
hundred miles from Cragg's Ridge.

And here it was, buried under a blind of soft snow, that Peter nosed
out the frozen carcass of a disemboweled buck which Boileau, the French
trapper, had poisoned for wolves. Jolly Roger had built a fire and was
warming half a pint of deer tallow for a baking of bannock, when Peter
dragged himself in, his rear legs already stiffening with the palsy of
strychnine. In a dozen seconds McKay had the warm tallow down Peter's
throat, to the last drop of it; and this he followed with another dose
as quickly as he could heat it, and in the end Peter gave up what he had
eaten.

Half an hour later Boileau, who was eating his dinner, jumped up in
wonderment when the door of his cabin was suddenly opened by a grim and
white-faced man who carried the limp body of a dog in his arms.

For a long time after this the shadow of death hung over the Frenchman's
trapping-shack. To Boileau, with his brotherly sympathy and regret that
his poison-bait had brought calamity, Peter was "just dog." But when at
last he saw the strong shoulders of the grim-faced stranger shaking over
Peter's paralyzed body and listened to the sobbing grief that broke in
passionate protest from his white lips, he drew back a little awed. It
seemed for a time that Peter was dead; and in those moments Jolly
Roger put his arms about him and buried his despairing face in Peter's
scraggly neck, calling in a wild fit of anguish for him to come back, to
live, to open his eyes again. Boileau, crossing himself, felt of Peter's
body and McKay heard his voice over him