For an hour he kept watch over the plain through his binoculars, seeking for a wisp of smoke that might rise at any time over the treetops.  He did not lose sight of Peter, questing out in widening circles below him.  And then, quite unexpectedly, something happened.  In the edge of a tiny meadow an eighth of a mile away Peter was acting strangely.  He was nosing the ground, gulping the wind, twisting eagerly back and forth.  Then he set out, steadily and with unmistakable decision, south and west.

In a flash Breault was on his feet, had caught up his pack, and was running for the meadow.  And there he found something in the velvety softness of the earth which brought a grim smile to his thin lips as he, too, set out south and west.

The scent he had found, hours old, drew Peter on until in the edge of the dusk of evening it brought him to a foot-worn trail leading to the Hudson’s Bay Company post many miles south.  In this path, beaten by the feet of generations of forest dwellers, the hard heels of McKay’s boots had made their imprint, and after this the scent was clearer under Peter’s nose.  But with forest-bred caution he still traveled slowly, though his blood was burning like a pitch-fed fire in his veins.  Almost as swiftly followed Breault behind him.

Again came darkness, and then the moon, brighter than last night, lighting his way between the two walls of the forest

CHAPTER XXIII

Dawn came softly where the quiet waters of the Willow Bud ran under deep forests of evergreen out into the gold and silver birch of the Nelson River flats.  A veiling mist rose out of the earth to meet the promise of day, gentle and sweet, like scented raiment, stirring sleepily to the pulse of an awakening earth.  Through it came the first low twitter of birdsong, a sound that seemed to swell and grow until it filled the world.  Yet was it still a sound of sleep, of half wakefulness, and the mist was thinning away when, a ruffled little breast sent out its full throat-song from the tip of a silver birch that overhung the stream.

The little warbler was looking down, as if wondering why there was no stir of life beneath him, where in last night’s sunset there had been much to wonder at and a new kind of song to thrill him.  But the girl was no longer there to sing back at him.  The cedar and balsam shelter dripped with morning dew, the place where fire had been was black and dead, and ruffling his feathers the warbler continued his song in triumph.

Nada, hidden under her shelter, and still half dreaming, heard him.  She lay with her head nestled in the crook of Roger’s arm, and the birdsong seemed to come to her from a great distance away.  She smiled, and her lips trembled, as if even in sleep she—­was about to answer it.  And then the song drifted away until she could no longer hear it, and she sank back into an oblivion of darkness in which she seemed lost for a long time, and out of which some invisible force was struggling to drag her.