Inthe weeks and months following the plague at Five Fingers Father Albanel did not forget his promise to Peter, and back in the shelter of the woods, where their secret was safe between them, he taught the boy "how to fight like a gentleman—if he had to fight at all." It was then Peter learned there was something more helpful than brute strength, and as his skill increased and he mastered one after another what the little missioner called "the tricks of the fighting game," his enthusiasm rose to a point where he could scarcely keep his secret from Mona. Their boxing-gloves, which Father Albanel had smuggled from the settlement, they kept securely hidden, and not until years later did Peter know that the holy man who was teaching him had at one time been regarded by fighting men as the handiest man with his fists between Fort William and Hudson Bay.
What he had learned he did not fully realize until early in June, when Aleck Curry and his father and the hateful black tug returned to the settlement. Using the influence of a brother who had been successful in politics, Izaak Curry had obtained timber concessions in several directions about Five Fingers, and now builthimself a cabin near the shore, but hidden back in the spruce. This he tenanted with a third brother and his wife, and with them Aleck lived while the tug was making its trips between Five Fingers and Fort William.
Aleck had grown still bigger, and in spite of Peter's resolution to make friends with him he would have none of it. His hatred for Peter was like some deadly thing that had poisoned every drop of blood in his veins, and Mona's growing beauty, and her quite open affection for his rival, stirred something that was more than hatred—more than brooding vindictiveness—in Aleck's heart. His father was rich, and he knew what that meant back in town; and his uncle was a power in politics, and had recently become Commissioner of Provincial Police. It enraged him that these facts carried no weight in Five Fingers. His own importance as the son of a rich man and the nephew of a Commissioner was utterly unrecognized here, while in town it had given him a position of first rank in spite of his bullying nature. This lack of appreciation, as he thought of it, he laid entirely at Peter's door, for it was Peter who had robbed him of his chances with Mona in the first place, and it was Peter who was keeping her away from him now.
So it was not long after Aleck's arrival before the climax came. It happened well out of sight of everybody, where Aleck had schemed that it should be, for he wanted no interference in his "beating up" of Peter.In the end both boys returned to the settlement with bleeding noses and black eyes. Neither was whipped. Aleck was dumbfounded. That his size and weight and all the training he had given himself during the winter had failed to beat Peter was unbelievable.
For two weeks after the fight there was not a day, excepting Sundays, when Father Albanel and Peter did not "take a walk" in the woods together. And along with these secret sessions Peter took advantage of every opportunity to run and swim that he might add to his wind. Almost daily he accepted insults from Aleck in order to avoid a fight, and never a day passed that Father Albanel did not repeat his warning to Peter to postpone further combat as long as possible. But the time came when Aleck once more followed up insult with physical action, with the result that he suffered a defeat so completely decisive that in August he returned to Fort William, fairly laughed out of Five Fingers.
Mona now made up Peter's world, and in his heart she kept constantly burning the faith that his father would return. But when winter came again, and another spring, and there was still no word from Donald McRae, Peter came at times to believe that his father was gone out of his life forever.
Aleck Curry again returned to Five Fingers in this third summer of Peter's life there. He was nineteen now, and was commissioned by his father to take an interest in his lumber business along the coast. A yearhad made a big change in him, and his hatred for Peter and his passion for Mona he kept more to himself. His father told Simon that in another year Aleck was going to join the provincial police, and would soon hold a commission in it....
Early in September, when Mona was in her sixteenth year, the event against which Peter had been steeling his heart for many months became a fact. Pierre and Josette had long planned that after Marie Antoinette's teaching in the little settlement school Mona should spend a year, and possibly two, under the tutelage of the Sisters in the Ursuline Convent in the city of Quebec. On the day Mona left, accompanied by Joe's wife, who went to see her safely settled in the distant city, Peter's world went as black as on that other day when his father disappeared out of his life.
The winter that followed was an endless one for Peter. Once each week, as surely as the weeks came round, he received a long letter from Mona, and five times during the winter he made the trip to the railroad settlement alone that he might not miss the love and cheer which came from her. And he was at the train to meet her, with Pierre and Josette and Marie Antoinette and Joe, when she came from the school in June.
At first he was dazed by the change in her, she had grown so much taller, and more beautiful, and he stood as if turned into wood while she greeted and kissed all the others. Then she turned to him, and her face was flooded with a color which he had never seen in itbefore. And after that—he could never remember how it happened—their arms were around each other, and Mona was crying—crying until tears blinded her—and he was kissing her, and she was kissing him, and then ran away from him to hug all the others again.
This summer in Five Fingers decided the lives of Peter and Mona. She was almost seventeen. She would go to school one more year, because that was the desire of Josette and Marie Antoinette. She would be nearly eighteen then. And when she was nineteen—on her nineteenth birthday, if Peter liked it that way—she would marry him.
During the second year of her absence Peter devoted every energy of soul and body toward making himself worthy of her. He worked and planned and studied hard under Marie Antoinette and Father Albanel. During this year several changes came to Five Fingers. Simon McQuarrie ended his dealings with Izaak Curry, and to rid their paradise of a bad memory Adette Clamart deliberately set fire to the Curry shack after he had gone, so that nothing remained but a square of ash and charred timbers. "And the wild phlox will cover that next summer," said Adette with a grim little shrug of her pretty shoulders.
Aleck Curry joined the police. In a day and a night, it seemed, he sprang into a great bulk of a man, heavy-faced, huge-shouldered, a giant in strength and physique, and with a hatred for Peter in his heart that had grown more merciless with the passing of years.He saw Mona each summer, and when she returned from her second year at school her beauty stirred in him a passion which submerged all other instincts and desires. He became a watchful, waiting beast, hiding the flame that was consuming him, preparing himself for the opportunity which he was determined should some day come his way.
As each week brought nearer the day of their own supreme happiness Mona and Peter no longer sensed this menace, or even thought of it, and because Aleck was so utterly outside all the possibilities of her life the deeper sentiment of womanhood growing in Mona compelled her to treat him more kindly. Even Simon's suspicions were dulled, for during the winter preceding her nineteenth birthday Aleck visited the settlement only twice. Another spring and summer followed. The twelfth of the coming October was Mona's birthday. On that day she would become Peter's wife. It was planned that they should live with Pierre and Josette until the good logging snows came, when all of Five Fingers would join in building their home.
It was on a day in August that Mona set out alone for the beaver pond, carrying a basket in which was her own and Peter's supper. Peter, returning from a trip up the shore, had promised to meet her before sundown in their old trysting-place, where two winters before he had built her a little "play-house" cabin.
And on this same afternoon, as Mona left the settlement, a stranger was making his way toward it.
An attitude of unusual caution and a haunted way of looking about him were the two things one would have noticed first as he came out of a swamp into an open forest of white pine. He drew in a deep breath of the freer air, and with a gesture of relief wiped his face with a hand that was rough and twisted and scratched by contact with briers. He was oddly disheveled and smeared with swamp oil. His gray head with its grizzled and uncut hair wore no hat, his shirt was in rags at the throat and sleeves and his trousers were tucked into high boots which bore evidence of having gone through mud and water to their tops. Upon his shoulders he carried a pack, and though the tenuity of its folds emphasized its lightness in weight, the man freed himself from his burden with an audible gasp of relief.
Then he leaned against a pine and looked back at the swamp from which he had come, listening with singular intentness for any sound which might strike with warning or unusual import upon the languorous stillness of the afternoon. His face was pallid under its stubble of beard even after the heat and exertion he had passed through; his cheeks were sunken as if by sickness or hunger, and his lips were drawn and thin. In his eyes seemed to lie all the strength that remained in the man. They were furtive and questing as they watched, missing no shadow that moved.
The sweetness of ripened summer, its lazy whisperings and the stillness which comes in a deep wood whenthe sun is overhead lay about him or trembled softly in the air. For hours he had been in an oven of swamp heat and winged pests; here it was cool. In the pine tops a hundred and fifty feet above his head was a faint stir of the breeze that came from Lake Superior. It reached down and touched his hot cheeks. He could taste the invigorating freshness of it, and there came slowly a change in his restless eyes, a softening of the tense lines about his mouth, a lighting up of his face where before it had held only suspense and watchful uncertainty. He picked up his shoulder pack, carrying it in his hand as he turned away from the swamp.
The transformation in the man's face was strangely at odds with the painful physical effort which accompanied his tedious progress. He no longer looked behind him but kept his eyes ahead, as if anticipating at any moment the appearance of something of vital importance toward which he was struggling with the last bit of strength that remained in his body. When at last he came to a little brook, gurgling between the pine roots, he fell rather than knelt beside it, and drank like one dying of thirst. Then again and again he plunged his face into hands filled with cold water and wet his head until his gray hair was dripping.
He followed the brook. Several times he stumbled and fell in the rougher places and once his toe caught a root and he plunged into the stream itself. At the end of an hour he had traveled a mile. Then he came to a knoll of hardwoods, crossed it and made his waydown through a lacework of yellow birch until he arrived at the edge of a deep, still pond that began in sunlight and lost itself in the almost cavernous coolness and shadow of a spruce and cedar forest. Instinctively the man knew it was a beaver pond, and almost instantly he had proof it was alive. A warning tail lashed the water with the sound of a paddle struck sideways, and across the pool, a short stone's throw away, an object moved through the water.
Dizzily the man sat down. His vision was clouded so that it was difficult for him to see even the moving object. He fell upon his side and stretched himself out on a couch of thick green grass. In another moment he was lying with his eyes closed but with ears keenly alert. During the next half-hour he heard every sound about him; then his pale eyelids closed heavily and a weariness of brain and body which he could no longer combat dulled his senses to a physical and mental inertness which was almost sleep.
In this state of somnolence he had lain for possibly a quarter of an hour when a sound reached his ears which first opened his eyes and then brought him in a quick and defensive movement to a posture that was half sitting and half crouching.
The sound came again, and amazement replaced the alarm in his face. What he heard was a feminine voice, strangely soft and subdued in this place of coolness and shadow and mysterious stillness. It was a note of laughter, almost birdlike in its sweetness, and theman's fingers clutched at the breast of his ragged shirt as he listened. Then he began to crawl slowly in the direction of the sound, making his way through a green thicket of willows, careful that no twig snapped under his weight to give warning of his approach. Suddenly he came upon a scene whose unexpectedness was almost a shock to him.
He had reached the farther edge of the willows, and before him was a little meadow not more than half an acre in extent, green and filled with wild flowers. Almost within reach of his hands was a mountain ash weighted with ripening fruit, and under this tree, close to the edge of the pool, a girl was seated on the grass, partly facing him. His first glimpse of her was of a bowed head crowned by a wealth of coiled hair; then, as she looked up, he saw her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her dark eyes shone, and as she laughed again she snuggled her face close down over a furry thing scrambling about in her lap. The man saw there were two of these creatures—baby beavers. His eyes wandered a little. At the edge of the pond, half out of the water, was a full-grown beaver. And this older inhabitant of the place was conscious of his presence in the willow thicket!
The girl was talking and laughing with the little ones, calling them by name. One was Telesphore and the other Peterkin—and the man drew in his breath with a gasp. He watched her tease them with a carrot. One scrambled up and tangled a foot in her hair.
"Peterkin!" she cried. "Peterkin—you little ruffian!"
The old beaver remained stolid and motionless, watching the menace in the willows. A companion swam lazily past, scented the danger and struck the water a blow with his tail before he dived.
The girl looked up quickly and spoke to the old beaver. "What is the matter, Peter?" she cried. "Don't be foolish. Come and get your carrot!"
It was then she heard a little cry behind her, and turned and saw the man's face in the willows.
Mona Guyonwas not afraid. She was startled, and thrilled by an instant intuitive sensing of the unusual and the significant in the man's unexpected appearance. Yet the color did not leave her cheeks nor did a cry come to her lips. She thrust the baby beavers from her lap and rose unexcitedly to her feet, tall, slim and amazingly beautiful.
She was looking steadily at the man, and as she looked her heart beat a little faster, for the wilderness had taught her a quick and definite understanding of the story she saw written in the wild face among the willows. Its tragedy flashed upon her before her parted lips had found words—hunger, sickness, the emaciation and weakness of a man who found less discomfort upon his hands and knees than upon his feet.
As she looked at him a change came into his face that the man himself could feel as there swept over him a slow and inundating sense of shame. Every instinct of chivalry in him revolted at the ridiculous and alarming figure he must be making of himself. But even in this moment of surprise and distress he did not entirely lose his sense of humor. He tried to smile. The effort was nothing short of pathos.
"I beg your pardon," he said as he rose a little unsteadily to his feet and came out of the willows. His raggedness and the coarse stubble on his face could not conceal the consciousness of pride with which he straightened himself and bowed to her. "I have come upon you like a wolf, and I know I look like a wolf. But I assure you I am as harmless as a sheep, and if you don't mind dividing your carrots with me——" He nodded toward the little yellow pile of carrots she had brought for her beaver pets.
His voice was pleasant. It made her think of Father Albanel, and as he spoke a smile was in his eyes and on his pale lips. She went quickly to his side and put a hand on his arm. Its firm young touch seemed to steady him.
"What has happened?" she asked. "You look——"
"Sick—and a little mad," he finished for her, when she hesitated. "But I'm mostly hungry, and if I may have the carrots——"
She helped him to the foot of the tree and he dropped down beside it with a weakness that made him hunch his shoulders in disgust.
"I have something better than carrots," she said. "Please sit here and I will get it."
She hurried across the little meadow to a deeper shade of thick-growing jack pines on the farther side, and the man turned his head to follow her movements with his eyes. Her beauty was twisting at something in his heart. A long time ago he had known someone likeher. The slim figure, walking swiftly across the open, took him back twenty years, and he could almost hear a sweet voice calling his name, and in a place very much like this, with the coolness of the wilderness all about and the sun shining through the trees. His hand touched the scrub of beard on his face and he shivered. The thought came to him that the girl was afraid of him and was running away. As she disappeared among the banksians he reached for one of the raw carrots and began to eat it.
Mona returned so quietly that he did not hear her until she was at his side. She brought a basket and a small pail of cold spring-water. She spread a napkin on his lap and loaded it with the contents of the basket. He was sensitively conscious of her eyes upon him and he tried not to appear ravenous as he began with meat and bread.
"I'm spoiling your picnic, child," he said, speaking to her feebly like a man who was very old. "I'm sorry."
"You're not spoiling it," she cried, leaning toward him with a gesture full of sweet tenderness. "Oh, I have been so happy today—God has made me happier by bringing me here in time to help you!"
"Happy," he whispered, as if to himself. "It is wonderful to be happy. I have known—what it is."
It was her struggle to appear natural now as he ate. She had never been so intimately close to starvation and pathos and weakness in man.
"Were you lost?" she asked.
He caught quickly at her suggestion. "Yes, lost—in the woods and the swamps between the railroad and here. I was trying to find a place called Five Fingers."
She gave a little exclamation. "I'm from Five Fingers. It is not far. Uncle Pierre calls it a mile and a half."
Mona wondered at the strange silence which came over the man, and the suddenness with which his hunger seemed to be satisfied.
"You have been an angel to me," he said, when he had finished. "And—things love you. Even the wild creatures." He was looking at the baby beavers, humped into furry balls at the edge of the pond. "You called one of them Peterkin, and the old beaver Peter. I wonder—why?"
"And there is a bear cub I call Pete," she added. "It is because—"
"Yes——"
Her eyes were shining.
"Because I am going to marry a man whose name is Peter."
It did not seem strange to her that she should be confessing the secret of her happiness to a man she had never seen before.
There was something in his eyes which made her want him to know, a mysterious gentleness that seemed to plead for her confidence and her friendship. It gave her a pleasurable thrill to tell someone that she lovedPeter and was going to be his wife. And this man was unlike any other who had ever come from the outside world into the wilderness isolation of Five Fingers.
In his rags and misfortune and his whitening hair and pale, thin face, she saw something which stirred more than her pity. And it was more than faith.
Just what it was, in that moment, she did not know. She was puzzled by the tremor which ran through his body coincident with her mention of Peter.
"And this Peter——" he began feverishly. The words seemed to choke in his throat, and he passed a hand over his eyes as if to wipe away a mist. Then he said: "He is a lucky lad. Is his name Peter McRae?"
"Yes. How did you know?"
"And—you love him?"
She nodded. "I was only thirteen then, but I loved him the first day he came to Five Fingers and fought Aleck Curry for me. Aleck was a bully and was pulling my hair."
The mysterious stranger bent his gray head so that she could not see his face. "That was six years ago last May, in the afternoon. And—Peter—did he ever tell you about—his father?"
"Yes, that same night. It was in the edge of the forest, and it was growing dark. He had brought a letter from his father to Simon McQuarrie, and Simon had told him the truth. He said his father had killed a man—accidentally—a long time ago, but that thepolice wouldn't believe it was an accident and were after him, and would hang him if he was caught. And ever since then——"
She was at his side, staring at him as he slowly raised his head, the color gone from her face and her white throat beating with the sudden mad pounding in her breast. "Ever since that night—that very hour—we have prayed together for Peter's father to come back. And you—you——"
He could not escape the wild questioning in her eyes and their demand to be answered.
"Would you havemePeter's father?" he asked uncertainly. "This way—an outlaw—ragged—dirty—a beggar——"
There was an almost tragic note of hopefulness in his voice.
"Yes," she cried, her voice breaking in excited entreaty from her lips. "If you are Peter's father, tell me. We have waited. And I have told him you would come. Oh, I havepromisedhim that, and have asked God every night to make it come true. Are you——" Her hands were reaching out to him.
"Yes, I am Peter's father."
There was no flash of joy or pride in his acknowledgment of the truth. His head sank upon his breast as if a sudden weariness had overcome him, and a moan of protest was in his voice. And then a thing happened which swept the bitterness and grief from Donald McRae's heart. He caught a glimpse of Mona's face,gloriously flushed in this moment of her answered prayer; and then her arms were about him, her soft cheek against his rough stubble of beard, and for an instant he felt the swift pressure of her lips against his.
He raised his hand and touched her hair. "Child," he cried brokenly, "dear child——"
She sprang up from him, half laughing and half sobbing, and ran out from under the mountain ash tree and stood in the edge of the clearing. With her hands in the form of a megaphone she called: "Peter! Peter!Oh, Peter!"
With a protesting cry he climbed to his feet and went to her. She saw the white, almost frightened look in his face and eyes. "Don't do that!" he exclaimed. "For God's sake—don't! Peter must not know I am here."
In her amazement her hands fell slowly from her face to her side. "Why?" she demanded.
"Because——" He stopped, listening to a voice that came faintly from out of the forest.
"That is Peter," said Mona. "We are going to eat our picnic supper here—at the pool."
"It is Peter—coming——"
"Yes."
He tried to breathe steadily, tried to speak calmly as he took her hand and stroked it with nervous gentleness. "What is your name?"
"Mona Guyon."
"Mona—Guyon. It is a pretty name. And you are sweet and good and beautiful. Peter's mother was like you. And—I am glad you love my boy." A new strength seemed to possess him.
The voice came again out of the forest, a little nearer this time, and Donald McRae held the girl's hand closer, and a tremor went through him as he smiled at her in the way he used to smile at his boy in the old days of their comradeship and happiness.
"That is my call," he said evenly. "Peter's mother and I used it twenty years ago, and afterward I taught it to Peter. It carries a long distance in the woods."
It was not his poverty and his weakness that affected Mona most. Something more than pity overwhelmed her—his forced calmness, the strange light in his eyes, the almost superhuman fight he was making to rise up out of his rags and his misery in the most tragic hours that could have come into his life. His words and his appearance set her heart pounding fiercely. She was a little frightened and wanted to put her arms about him again and hold him until Peter came. What did he mean?
"Why mustn't Peter know you are here?" she demanded. "Why?"
He led her back in the willows. In a moment they were hidden.
"Are you brave enough to hear? And do you love Peter enough to help—me?" he asked her.
"Yes, yes, I will help you."
He stood so that he could look out of the willows and across the meadow through which Peter would come. A moment of despair and hopelessness twisted the muscles of his face.
"He must not see me," he said in a voice that was hardly more than a strained whisper. "Child, you must understand—you most of all. Don't you know why I ran away from Peter that day near Five Fingers, and sent him on to Simon McQuarrie? It was so Peter might have a chance in life that he never could have with me, even if I escaped the law. I, too, have prayed—every day and every night through the years that have been more than eternities for me; prayed that good and happiness might come to him, and that in time even the memory of his father would wear away. But never for an instant have I been able to forget my boy. He has been a part of my soul and body, walking with me, sleeping with me, sitting with me beside my hidden camp-fires at night, until at times the desire to see him once more was so strong in me that it almost drove me mad. And all this time I was hunted, running from place to place, living in swamps and hidden depths of the forests, avoiding men and places of habitation—but with Peter always at my side, just as he looked that last terrible day at the edge of Five Fingers when he pleaded with me to take him along——"
His lips trembled and a shiver ran through his body.
"And through those years Peterwaswith you—Peterand I," replied the girl. "Summer nights we used to ask the moon where you were, and when it was cold and stormy we—we prayed. And on Christmas—Peter always got a present—foryou."
A joyous light passed over his haggard face. "You thought of me—on Christmas?"
"Yes, always. And Peter asked me to keep the presents carefully in my cedar chest, for we knew you would come back some day. And now——"
It was Peter's voice that came to them again, much nearer. Donald's arms fell away from the girl, but she raised her face quickly and kissed him. Her eyes were filled with tears.
"Peter is wondering why I do not answer. Please—please——"
In his indecision he bowed his face in his hands. It was with an effort that he shook himself free of temptation.
"I must tell you quickly, and you must understand," he said desperately. "The police are close after me again. That is why I was in the great swamp to the north—to get away from them. If I come back into Peter's life now it can only be for a few hours, and you know what it will mean—a fresh tragedy for him, a new grief, pain, disgrace, a black cloud of unhappiness over the paradise which you have made and can make for him. I have come back to see him, to look at him, to carry away a new picture of him in my heart. But he must not know. And if you love Peter—if you care alittle for what is in the heart of his father—you will make it possible for me to look upon my boy. I will hide here, in the willows; and you two, there under the ash tree——"
"It is wrong," broke in Mona. "Oh, it is terribly wrong!"
"No, it is right," he persisted. "It will make me happy—to see him so near to me, hear his voice and know that life and God andyouhave been good to him. If I see Peter, child, if his hands touch me, if we are together again—it may cost me my life. For those things would hold me; I could not go away again after that, and the police are near, very near, and if they should catch me——"
The sag that came into his shoulders gave eloquence to the thing which he did not finish, and Mona's eyes burned with a fire which dried up her tears. "If I bring Peter down there, under the tree, will you promise not to go away until I have seen you again?" she asked.
"Yes, I promise that."
"Even if it is tomorrow, or the next day?"
"I will wait."
It was hard for him to lie, looking into the beautiful eyes that were fixed upon him so steadily. But he did it splendidly; so well that Mona did not guess the falsehood back of his last great fight.
She turned from him swiftly with her face toward the meadow.
"I will bring Peter—down there," she said.
She ran to the mountain ash tree and in a few breathless seconds rearranged the luncheon basket and tossed half eaten bits of food into the pond. Then she hurried across the meadow. Peter's call came to her again, and this time she answered it. In the deep shade on the farther side of the meadow she stopped and pressed her hands to her face. Her cheeks were hot. She was fighting against a sense of overwhelming guilt, for in this hour, this very minute, she knew she was not only betraying Peter, but committing the sacrilege of repudiating answered prayer. And Peter must not know!
He could not fail to see her excitement, unless—she laughed softly as the old, sweet thought came to her. Peter loved her hair. He loved to see it down, as on that first day six years ago when he came upon her in the edge of the forest near Five Fingers. She paused again, and her fingers worked swiftly among its lustrous coils until they fell about her. Peter would guess nothing now—when she came to him like this, in a way that shut his eyes to all the rest of the world.
She could hear him coming through the brush. He was running, and she guessed at the alarm which was urging him because she had failed to answer his calls until that last time, when she knew her voice had not sent forth the old cry in just the way it should have greeted Peter.
She stood very still, so that when Peter leaped over a fallen tree not twenty paces away from her he did not see her. He stopped, his head thrown back, breathingquickly, and listening; and in this moment Mona recalled the other day of years ago when he came into the cutting near Five Fingers and found her struggling with Aleck Curry, the bully of the settlement.
He was the same Peter, only now he was a man. His hair had not darkened and his eyes were the same blue. He was the clean-cut, fearless, sensitive Peter who had gone into battle for her against a boy nearly twice his weight and years older. The years had given a splendid change to his body. He was still slim, like the old Peter, and there was a litheness and alertness in him which filled her with pride. She held her breath, watching him, and exulted when she saw the anxiety in his face. Then he called again, and in the moment of silence which followed she suddenly clapped her hands and laughed.
Peter turned in amazement, and when he saw her standing as she was, with her long hair streaming about her, he drew in a deep breath, and the blood surged into his tense face as he came to her. The happiness which swept his anxiety away brought a responsive glow of joy into her eyes, and as she held out her arms to him she forgot for a moment the man hidden among the willows near the mountain ash tree. For a little while Peter held her so close she could feel the thumping of his heart, and not until he had kissed her hair and her lips did he seem to have breath to ask why she had not answered his calls.
"To punish you for making me wait so long atthe pond," she said. "But"—she raised a soft tress to his lips—"I was sorry, at the last moment, and didthisfor you, Peter. Will you forgive me?"
She was thinking of Donald McRae again, and slipping her hand into Peter's, she led him toward the pond. And Peter, in the sweetness and joy of her presence, guessed nothing because her fingers tightened in his hand or because her breath came more quickly than usual.
They drew nearer to the ash tree and the willows. She knew that Donald McRae was now looking upon the face of his boy; she could see the clump of twisted bushes behind which he was hidden, and caught a movement in their tops, as if an animal or a breath of wind had disturbed them.
They were under the ash tree when she flung back her hair, no longer making an effort to hide from Peter the distress in her face. He was shocked, even a little terrified at her appearance. Involuntarily her glance went beyond him to the thicket which concealed Donald McRae. It was only a few steps away, and she knew Peter's father could distinctly hear what they said. Then she looked at Peter again, and smiled gently at his suspense as she raised one of his hands to her lips in the soft caress that always wiped away his troubles. And in that same moment she drew him a step nearer to the willows.
"Something happened before you came," she said, speaking so that Donald McRae would not lose a wordof what she was saying. "I think I must have had a—a—dream—and it was terrible!" She shuddered, and listened to the breaking of a twig in the willows. "I am foolish to let it frighten me."
His arms were about her, his fingers smoothing back her shining hair as relief leaped into his face.
"You were asleep,Ange—with me bursting my throat to make you hear from the forest?"
She did not answer his question. Instead, she said: "Peter, you have not lied to me? You believe in prayer?"
He bent his lips to her white forehead. "Yes,Ange, and yours most of all. God has answered you, and always will."
"And we have prayed a long time for your father to come back?"
He nodded wonderingly. "Yes, a long time."
She spoke slowly then, and her words were for Donald McRae and not for Peter.
"And if your father does not come, if you never see him again, your faith in the God we have prayed to for so long will be a little broken, will it not, Peter?"
She waited, holding her breath for fear even that sound might come between Peter's answer and the man in the bushes.
"He will come—some day—Mona."
"That was what he promised you—the day he sent you on alone to Five Fingers, and ran away from you? And you have always told me that next to your faithin God you believed in your father. You have never thought that he lied to you that day in the edge of the forest?"
He stared at her, speechless, and in that moment she faced the willows with a glow of triumph in her eyes.
"Down in the little church at Five Fingers Father Albanel has always taught us not to lie and to be true to our promise," she said, speaking directly at the willows. "Peter, if your father should break his faith, or I should break mine, it would be terrible. And that is what happened—in my vision—and it has frightened me." She rested her cheek against his arm so he could not see her face. "I was here—under the tree—when in this vision your father came. He was ragged and tired and sick—and so hungry he ate carrots I brought for the beavers. He had come just to look at you, Peter, but not to let you know. He said it would make you unhappy; that it was best for you that he should never come into your life again—and he made me promise not to tell you that he was here.
"And I promised. I did—I promised him I would be a traitor to you, after all the years we have waited for him, and prayed for him, andbelievedin him."
Her arms crept up to his shoulders. "If I should do a thing like that God would never forgive me, and you—if some day you found out what I had done—would never have faith in me again. Would you?"
She hid her face against his shoulder, her heart beating wildly, her body trembling. For she had seenanother movement in the willows and she was afraid that Donald McRae was going away.
"It was only a dream," Peter was saying, holding his arms closely about her. "You are not afraid of dreams, Mona?"
And then from behind them came a voice.
"God forgive me my weakness!" it cried. "Peter—Peter——"
Donald McRae stood out in the open at the edge of the willow thicket. He had forgotten the rags and mud that covered him, and was no longer a fugitive with the lines of a hunted man in his face. The present was for a space obliterated—the present with its menace of the law, its exhaustion and its poverty; and he was standing once more in the warm glow of that day of six years ago when he had said good-by to Peter. In those seconds, when Peter stood shocked into deathlike stillness by the sound of the voice behind him, Mona could see Donald McRae with his outreaching arms; but as Peter turned slowly, facing his father, the strain broke in a hot flood of tears that blinded her vision.
And then——
"Dad!"
It was the strangest cry she had ever heard from Peter's lips, and with an answer to that cry in her own choking breast she turned away as the two men came into each other's arms. She passed out of sight along the edge of the pond, scarcely seeing the path aheadof her, and unconsciously she kept repeating Peter's name in a whisper, as if—even though she had prayed so long for this hour to come—she had never quite expected its fulfilment.
Underthe ash tree, for a few moments Peter was the boy again; the boy of yesterday, of years ago, when the world had held nothing for him but his father; and there was no change in the touch of the hands that had always given him comfort and courage and a love that was almost like a woman's in its gentleness. Not until Donald McRae held his boy off, with a hand on each shoulder, did something besides the madness of joy at his father's homecoming begin to thrust itself upon Peter. Then he saw the change—the naked breast, the half-bared arms, the mud and the rags, and the face and hair in which years had stamped their heels unpityingly. He tried to choke back his horror, to keep it out of his face, and to do this he laughed—laughed through the tears and sobbing breath—and pointed to a white birch tree in which a blue jay was screaming.
"The blue jay, dad!" he cried. "Remember that day—behind the log—with the blue jay in the tree-top, and the sapsucker pecking at our elbows, and the violets between my knees——"
The hands on his shoulders were relaxing.
"I've never seen a blue jay but what I've thought—ofyou," said Donald McRae. "And the river—behind us—and how we got away from the police—and the rabbits we roasted—and—and——" The world was twisting and turning round again. He tried to smile, and reached out gropingly for Peter. "The swamp was hot, Peter. And I am tired—tired——"
Peter's arms caught him as he swayed. His thin face was whiter, and his eyes closed as he still tried to smile at his boy.
Mona, braiding her hair as she waited beyond the willows, heard Peter's frightened call. When she came running to him he was kneeling beside his father, cooling his face with water from the pond. Donald McRae lay upon the grass. He was scarcely breathing, and under the scrub of beard his emaciated face was like wax. An agony of fear and grief had driven the happiness out of Peter's face, and he tried to speak as he looked up at Mona.
She saw what had happened as she knelt beside him and took Donald McRae's head tenderly in her arms. Excitement and his last great effort to fight down his weakness had given a semblance of strength to this shell of a man. But it was gone now, and the full measure of its tragedy struck like a charge of lead to Peter's heart.
Mona, feeling Peter's grief, and guessing swiftly the thought that had made his wordless lips white and trembling, said to comfort him: "He hasn't been this way long, Peter. It was the swamp. He told me thepolice were after him, and he hid himself there. The heat—bad water——"
She tried futilely to explain away the horror of the thing—to make Peter believe this wreck of a man was not the product of months and years of hardship and suffering, but had reached his condition because of a passing torment that had covered only a few days in the swamp. But she knew she was failing, and she stopped before she had finished, with her head bowed before Peter's eyes. She heard his tense lips whisper "the police" as if the words choked him as they came out, and then he went down again to the edge of the pool for water. She wet her handkerchief when he returned and held it over Donald's eyes, and Peter unlaced the worn-out, muddy boots—and suddenly a sound came from him, a little cry of unutterable understanding as his hand found in the trampled grass the half-eaten carrot which his father had dropped.
She had never seen Peter's face so white, and never before had she seen a look in his blue eyes so unlike the Peter she had grown up with, and played with, and loved.
"He is breathing easier," she said. "It was the excitement, the shock——"
He nodded, and replied in a dead, even voice: "I know what it was,Ange. I know." He took one of his father's hands and held it between his own, looking at the face in Mona's arms into which life was beginning to return and breath to come more evenly. "Ithas been a long time, dad. Six years—six years like those three days when the police were hunting us in the forest, and you caught rabbits for me to eat. But it is ended now."
Mona's heart throbbed. "We will keep him with us, Peter—always! We will hide him—somewhere—never let him go away again! Oh, it will be easy for us to do that, and Father Albanel—and Simon—will help us——"
A deeper breath trembled on Donald McRae's lips, but it was not that breath, or the faint moan that came with it, that stopped her before she had finished. Peter was looking over her head at something beyond her. He dropped his father's hand, and what she saw in his face drew a gasping cry from her even before she knew its cause. She turned and looked. And then, in an instant, she was on her feet with Peter.
So quietly that no sound of footfall or breaking twig had given warning of his approach, a man had stolen upon them. He stood not a dozen feet away, dressed in the field service uniform of the Provincial Police. That was the first terrible fact which telegraphed itself to her brain; the man was an officer, he was after Donald McRae, and he had caught them! But this first alarm gave place to a greater shock as her eyes saw the face above the uniform. It was a large, coarse face streaming with sweat; the lips were heavy, the nose big, and the eyes were small and too close together for one who bulked so large. It was aface filled with triumph—an exultation which the man made dramatically poignant as he stood with his heavy hands on his hips, looking from one to the other with a smile that was deadly in its promise twisting the corners of his mouth.
He did not speak, did not even move, but waited while his presence crushed like a weight of horror upon the two who were staring at him. His eyes rested on Mona, and the wicked gleam in them—the thought which they could not hide, merciless, sure, almost gloating—drew his name from her lips in a cry that was filled with fear, with half disbelief, with a note that almost called for pity.
"Aleck—Curry!"
The man's heavy head nodded, but he did not speak. It was still too great a moment of triumph to be broken by voice. He looked at Peter, and then, slowly, significantly, at the unconscious form of Peter's father. God could not have given him a greater hour than this! For if it had not been for that man and for Peter, he might have had the girl. It was Peter who had come in his way from that first day when they had fought over Mona in the edge of the clearing; it was Peter who had whipped him, Peter whom he had grown to hate above all other things on earth—and it was Peter's heart and soul and happiness, almost his very life, that he now held in the hollow of his hand!
And he would make him pay.
"Yes,it is ended now," he said, repeating Peter'swords of a few moments before. "And I'm rather glad. The swamp was hot and filled with mosquitoes."
Something clinked as he fumbled at his belt and the sound sent a chill of horror through Mona. He held out the manacle irons so that she could see them.
"I've got to do it," he said, a mocking apology in his voice. "Distasteful, but necessary." He faced Peter. "Your father knew we were close behind him, and it won't do him any good to play dead. He's slippery, and I'm going to put these on him. I guess——" He swung his heavy head toward Mona again. "I guess Father Albanel and old Simon can't help him very much from now on. It was nice of you to think of it, though, Mona. You were always so tender-hearted—when it came to Peter!"
He was still the old bully and his voice trembled with the suppression of his triumph. This was his master stroke. It was not capture of the man whom the law would condemn to hang that thrilled him most; it was the twisted beauty in Mona's face, the shock and terror in her eyes, and the helplessness and despair he saw in Peter's. He did not hurry, did not call for an instant upon the dignity of the law, but twisted the knife of his vengeance slowly.
When Mona's eyes turned from him to Peter her heart stood still. He was gray. There was no blood in his lips. He was looking down upon the still, upturned face of his father, and his hands were clenched. When he raised his head she saw that his eyes were no longerPeter's eyes. He advanced slowly toward Aleck Curry, and the manacles rattled as Aleck dropped them to his belt and shifted a hand to his pistol holster.
Peter did not hear the click of steel or sense the menace of the shifting hand. One thought pounded maddeningly in his brain; his father had come back to him, he washome, and in the first hour of his return this beast had come into their lives again to break down every hope and prayer they had built up during the years. In Aleck Curry he saw not only that merciless law which had run his father like a rat from hole to hole, but a monster of vicious hate, a lustful, bullying boy grown into a still more vicious giant—and Peter's desire was to kill him.
Mona saw the deadly intent in his slow advance even as Aleck Curry saw it. She saw more—the hand on the pistol, the tightening fingers, the dangerous gleam that flashed in Aleck's eyes—and Peter with only his naked hands! A cry of warning came to her lips—of a terror which robbed her of the power to move. The cry ended in a scream, for as Peter leaped in, Aleck raised the pistol and fired. A terrible sickness came over her, a sickness which for an instant swept away her strength.
Peter felt the hot breath of the pistol in his face and the explosion was so near it fell like a blow against his eardrums. It was not a shot intended only to frighten him, for death had missed him by less than the width of his hand. Aleck released the trigger of hisautomatic and crooked his finger again, but even quicker than that movement was Peter, who flung himself with all his weight under his enemy's arm as the second shot was fired. He did not strike, but with both hands clutched Aleck's wrist, and at the same time tripped his foe so that they went to the earth together, with Aleck on his back.
In this instant there came upon Peter a crushing realization of the almost deadly odds against him. Into every nerve of his body flashed the truth—that he was fighting a man who wanted to kill him, who in reality had the right to kill him, and whom the law would not only vindicate but would commend for killing him. He was an outlaw, fighting against the almighty omniscience of that law, and what the world would regard as justice. And his survival now, like that of his father, depended upon beating it. He must break his enemy's wrist. Get the gun. Kill or be killed.
Every ounce of his strength he exerted upon the wrist as Aleck flung his free arm in a powerful and throttling embrace about his neck. He drew the wrist in, twisted it, and tried with a sudden effort to give it the final breaking snap, but it was like a piece of steel that would not break. The thick fingers did not loosen their hold on the pistol, and in spite of his desperate effort Peter's staring eyes saw the black muzzle of the weapon forcing itself a fraction of an inch at a time toward his body.
Now, when it was too late, he knew that in this closeembrace he was not a match for Aleck. His quickness and his tirelessness counted for nothing. Aleck, slow, heavy, with not a quarter of his endurance, but with the brute strength of three men in his coarse body, could crush the life out of him in close quarters. Yet these first few thrilling instants Peter knew this thought was not in the other's mind. All of his enemy's great strength was being exerted in an effort to point the pistol at his body.
Those two or three minutes in which he knew he was fighting to save his life seemed like an eternity to Peter. He saw Aleck's face, twisted in a leering grin, its bloodshot eyes laughing at him, its thick mouth mocking him as the powerful arm and wrist broke down with a slow, torturing sureness all the force he was putting against it. The gun was already at right angles to his body, and suddenly Peter realized why Aleck Curry had not used the choking force of his other arm before this. He had waited for the right moment—and that moment had come. The arm tightened. It was like a half-ring of steel, crushing Peter's neck and twisting his head so that his widening eyes left the pistol and stared into the lower branches of the ash tree.
In that moment he saw Mona. She was staggering up from the edge of the pond with something in her hands which looked like a chunk of mud. Her face passed over him, desperately white, and then she had fallen on her knees and he could hear thebeat,beat,eatof that something in her hands close to his ears. A terrible cry came from Aleck Curry, and the throttling arm about Peter's neck relaxed until he could turn his head again, and he saw Mona pounding his foe's pistol hand with the stone that had looked like a chunk of mud. He saw the hand redden with blood saw the thick fingers loosen their grip on the pistol, and then swift as a flash Mona had snatched the big automatic and was backing away with it in her hand.
With a mighty, upward heave of his body Peter freed himself, and with that movement came a wild cry out of him, a joyous approval of what Mona had done. Aleck lunged after him. They came to their feet. Peter's fist shot out to the other's jaw, and as Aleck staggered backward, almost falling under the force of the blow, Peter turned to take the pistol from Mona. She was halfway to the pond, and even as he cried out in warning and dismay the weapon left her hand, circled through the air and disappeared with a splash in the water. At his cry she faced him and ran back and thrust the mud-covered rock in his hand. Then he saw the terror in her eyes—the agony of fear that had made her throw away the weapon that had almost taken his life.
He let the rock slip from his fingers and fall to the ground in spite of the exclamation of protest which came from her white lips. He did not see her stoop quickly and pick it up as he advanced to meet Aleck Curry. His foe was hunched forward, like a gorilla,his head lowered, his huge fists clenched, his face distorted by the shock of Peter's blow and a rage which gave him a terrible aspect.
Then he rushed in, his arms apart, his great hands reaching for the man he hated. With the quickness of a cat Peter met his attack, avoiding the arms and the huge hands, leaping in, striking and darting back. He drove blow after blow, and one of them, catching Aleck again on the jaw, had behind it all the weight and force of his body. But even that scarcely more than rocked the brutish head on its thick neck. He advanced slowly and steadily, taking the blows as he moved like a juggernaut upon Peter, driving him an inch at a time toward the edge of the pool.
Suddenly Mona ran in from behind, and with both hands she raised her stone and beat it between Aleck's shoulders. She raised it again, trying to strike his neck or his head, when with a bellow Aleck flung himself around, his great arm flying out like a beam. The blow caught Mona with all its force and sent her in a crumpled heap to the earth. Not a cry came from her lips, but a yell of fury burst from Peter's. He rushed in, and a hurricane of blows smashed into Aleck's face, cutting his lips, blinding him and choking the breath in his throat. But in that blindness and pain his hand reached out and caught Peter as their feet sank in the mud at the edge of the pond. A cry of triumph came from his bleeding mouth. At last his moment had come.
As Peter felt himself dragged into the deadly embrace his mind worked swiftly. His one chance now lay in the depths of the pool, and unless he could get his enemy there he was lost. Thrusting up his hands, he clenched them in Aleck's hair and put all his weight in dragging the head downward. The movement had its effect, and a step was gained toward the edge of the muddy shelf that terminated abruptly in eight feet of water. Unconscious of the trap, Aleck bent himself forward, putting all the crushing strength of his arms in the grip about Peter's body, and as Peter flung the weight of his head and shoulders in the same direction their balance was upset and they plunged into the pond.
As they struck the water Peter drew a great breath into his lungs, and in the same moment his foe relaxed his grip and began to flounder wildly in an element in which, even in the days of their boyhood, he had never been at home. His face rose above the surface for an instant, and Mona saw it as she staggered to the edge of the pond. It was then a deadly weight attached itself to one of his kicking legs, and not until Peter had dragged his burden to the muddy bottom of the beaver stronghold did he release his hold. He shot up for air, and scarcely had Aleck's body struggled to the surface when he dived again, and a second time bore his victim under. This time he expelled most of the air in his lungs, and for a few seconds hung on like an anchor.
A third and a fourth time, Aleck rose, fighting for his life, but the fifth time it was Peter who buoyed him up and brought him nearly unconscious to the shore. He noticed the livid mark made by Aleck's hand on Mona's forehead as she helped him drag the heavy body out of the water. In another half-minute he had the manacles intended for his father about Curry's wrists, and with his belt he securely lashed his prisoner's legs together. Then he faced Mona.
The same question was in their eyes. In Mona's it was a wordless terror. Peter looked at his father. He was stirring. A hand rose weakly from the grass. He had seen nothing of the struggle, heard nothing, and thought of him was first to leap into Peter's mind.
"He doesn't know what has happened!" he panted. "We must get him away, Mona. If anything would kill him now, it would be knowledge of this—that the law has found him—and that I—in helping him—have become an outlaw myself."
She came to him quickly and put her hands to his face, just as she had done on that other day years ago when he had fought his great battle with Aleck. "They can't blame you alone, Peter. I helped." She held up her lips, but instead of kissing them he pressed his own to the reddening mark on her forehead. "There is the little cabin," she whispered. "We can take your father there. And—I love you, Peter!"
She stood back from him, her eyes shining with sudden inspiration.
Aleck Curry had coughed the water out of his lungs and was twisting in his bonds. His voice called loudly as Peter bent over his father. Donald's eyes were opening.
"We must hurry!" urged Mona. "We must get away—where he is safe—where he cannot be found!"
Peter raised his father in his arms. The weight of the emaciated body sent a stab of pain through him. It was as if he had picked up the limp form of a boy.
Mona, close at his side, smiled into the grief-filled eyes he turned toward her. Together they hurried across the meadow. And then Mona ran on ahead, following a scarcely worn path through deep timber until in a few moments she came to another little meadow; here, under a clump of hardwoods, was a tiny cabin of logs—the "play-house" Peter had built for her two winters ago as a refuge and rest place for her when she came to visit her beaver pets. Inside a screened porch was a couch of saplings, and on this she had spread blankets and cushions by the time Peter arrived.
Donald's eyes were wide open, and he was smiling up wanly at Peter. "Never thought the day would come when you'd be lugging your dad around like this, did you, Peter?" he asked, and tried to laugh. But the moment his head touched the soft cushions his eyes closed again. Peter drew Mona away. "There is a boat down on the shore of the lake," he said, his voice steady again. "I'm going to force Aleck Curryinto it and take him out to that little rock island two miles from the mainland. No one ever goes near it, and we can keep him there a prisoner until dad gets well, and then——" An angry yell came from the beaver pond. "Aleck is getting nervous," he finished. "You stay with dad, Mona. Tell him I've gone to Five Fingers for things he needs. I'll come back that way, and will get here before dark. Good-by,Ange!"
He kissed her. For a moment Mona clung to his hand.
"When you are down by the big stub—and if everything is all right—send me back the call," she entreated.
She watched him until he disappeared. Then she sat down close beside Donald McRae and held one of his limp hands. After what seemed to be a long time there came back to her clearly Peter's signal-cry, telling her that all was well, and that he was on his way to the prison island with Aleck Curry.
Over the forest fell a deep and quieting silence. Never had it seemed so intense to Mona, as she sat with Donald McRae's hand held closely in her own. The man's fingers were intertwined with hers as if he was afraid she would leave him; and his breath, coming more evenly and yet as faintly as the breath of a child, told her that complete exhaustion had at last overcome him with a sleep that was almost like death.
Twilight dusk began to fill the aisles of the woods, and with this dusk the last red glow died out of thewest, and with it came the hour Mona loved more than all others—when darkness began to close in a velvety mantle over the world. The stillness, the soft whisperings of the forest and the peace that always came with night gave her courage and strengthened her faith. And at last, from beyond the beaver pond, she heard again Peter's cry. He was returning.
And as if he, too, had heard that cry, Donald McRae stirred softly and whispered Peter's name.