She was crying, with her head on his breast, and her slim, half
bare arms around his neck, and Jolly Roger listened like a miser
to the choking words that came with her sobs. And where there had
been tumult and indecision in his heart there came suddenly the
clearness of sunshine and joy, and with it the happiness of a new
and mighty possession as his arms closed about her, and he turned
her face up, so that for the first time he kissed the soft red
lips that for some inscrutable reason the God of all things had
given into his keeping this day.

And then, holding her close, with her arms still tighter about his
neck, he cried softly,

"I'm goin' to take you, little girl. You're goin' with Peter and
me, for ever--and ever. And we'll go--tonight!"

When Peter came back, just in the last sunset glow of the evening,
he found his master alone in the bit of jackpine opening, and Nada
was swiftly crossing the larger meadow that lay between them and
the break in Cragg's Ridge, beyond which was Jed Hawkins' cabin.
It was not the same Jolly Roger whom he had left half an hour
before. It was not the man of the hiding-place in the rock-pile.
Jolly Roger McKay, standing there in the last soft glow of the
day, was no longer the fugitive and the outcast. He stood with
silent lips, yet his soul was crying out its gratitude to all that
God of Life which breathed its sweetness of summer evening about
him. He was the First Possessor of the earth. In that hour, that
moment, he would not have sold his place for all the happiness of
all the remaining people in the world. He cried out aloud, and
Peter, squatted at his feet with his red tongue lolling out,