listened to him.

"She is mine, mine, mine," he was saying, and he repeated that
word over and over, until Peter quirked his ears, and wondered
what it meant. And then, seeing Peter, Jolly Roger laughed softly,
and bent over him, with a look of awe and wonderment mingling with
the happiness in his face.

"She's mine--ours," he cried boyishly. "God A'mighty took a hand,
Pied-Bot, and she's going with us! We're going tonight, when the
moon comes up. And Peter--Peter--we're going straight to the
Missioner's, and he'll marry us, and then we'll hit for a place
where no one in the world will ever find us. The law may want us,
Pied-Bot, but God--this God all around--is good to us. And we'll
try and pay Him back. We will, Peter!"

He straightened himself, and faced the west. Then he picked up the
bundle Nada had brought, and dived through the jackpines, with
Peter at his heels. Swiftly they moved through the shadowing dusk
of the plain, and came at last to the Stew-Kettle, and to their
hiding-place under the shoulders of Gog and Magog. There was still
a faint twilight in the tunnel, and in this twilight Jolly Roger
McKay packed his possessions; and then, with fingers that trembled
as if they were committing a sacrilege, he drew Nada's few
treasures from her bundle and placed them tenderly with his own.
And all the time Peter heard him saying things under his breath,
so softly that it was like the whispered drone of song.

In darkness they went down through the rocks to the plain, and
half an hour later they came to the break in the Ridge, and went