as he loosed the girl's hair. Peter heard the yell, and his teeth
sank deeper in the flesh of the first thing he had ever hated. It
was the girl, more than Peter, who realized the horror of what
followed. The man bent down and his powerful fingers closed round
Peter's scrawny neck, and Peter felt his wind suddenly shut off,
and his mouth opened. Then Jed Hawkins drew back the arm that held
him, as he would have drawn it back to fling a stone.

With a scream the girl tore at him as his arm straightened out,
and Peter went hurtling through the air. Her stick struck him
fiercely across the face, and in that same moment there was a
sickening, crushing thud as Peter's loosely-jointed little body
struck against the face of the great rock. When Nada turned Peter
was groveling in the sand, his hips and back broken down, but his
bright eyes were on her, and without a whimper or a whine he was
struggling to drag himself toward her. Only Jolly Roger could tell
the story of how Peter's mother had died for a woman, and in this
moment it must have been that her spirit entered into Peter's
soul, for the pain of his terrible hurt was forgotten in his
desire to drag himself back to the feet of the girl, and die
facing her enemy--the man. He did not know that he was dragging
his broken body only an inch at a time through the sand. But the
girl saw the terrible truth, and with a cry of agony which all of
Hawkin's torture could not have wrung from her she ran to him, and
fell upon her knees, and gathered him tenderly in her arms. Then,
in a flash, she was on her feet, facing Jed Hawkins like a little
demon.

"For that--I'll kill you!" she panted. "I will. I'll kill you!"