He lay back on his blanket, with the fingers of one hand gripped closely about Peter.

“Be quiet, boy,” he whispered.  “Be quiet.”

He could see the shutting out of light at his door as the girl stood there, listening for his breathing.  He breathed heavily, and before he closed his eyes he saw Josephine Tavish coming toward him.  In a moment she was bending over him.  He could feel the soft caress of her loose hair on his face and hands.  Then she knelt quietly down beside him, stroking Peter with her hand, and shook him lightly by the shoulder.

“Jolly Roger!” she whispered.  “Jolly Roger McKay!”

He opened his eyes, looking up at the white face in the gloom.

“Yes,” he replied softly.  “What is it, Miss Tavish?”

He could hear the choking breath in her throat as her fingers tightened at his shoulder.  She bent her face still nearer to him, until her hair cluttered his throat and breast.

“You are—­awake?”

“Yes.”

“Then—­listen to me.  If you are Jolly Roger McKay you must get away—­somewhere.  You must go before Breault awakens in the morning.  I think the storm is over—­there is no wind—­and if you are here when day comes—­”

Her fingers loosened.  Jolly Roger reached out and somewhere in the darkness he found her hand.  It clasped his own—­firm, warm, thrilling.

“I thank you for what you have done,” she whispered.  “But the law —­and Breault—­they have no mercy!”

She was gone, swiftly and silently, and McKay looked through the slit in the wall until she was with her father again.

In the gloom he drew Peter close to him.

“We’re up against it again, Pied-Bot,” he confided under his breath.  “We’ve got to take another chance.”

He worked without sound, and in a quarter of an hour his pack was ready, and the entrance to his tunnel dug out.  He went into the outer room then, where Josephine Tavish was awake.  Jolly Roger pantomimed his desire as she sat up.  He wanted something from one of the packs.  She nodded.  On his knees he fumbled in the dunnage, and when he rose to his feet, facing the girl, her eyes opened wide at what he held in his hand—­a small packet of old newspapers her father was taking to the factor at Fort Churchill.  She saw the hungry, apologetic look in his eyes, and her woman’s heart understood.  She smiled gently at him, and her lips formed an unvoiced whisper of gratitude as he turned to go.  At the door he looked back.  He thought she was beautiful then, with her shining hair and eyes, and her lips parted, and her hands half reaching out to him, as if in that moment of parting she was giving him courage and faith.  Suddenly she pressed the palms of her fingers to her mouth and sent the kiss of benediction to him through the twilight glow of the snow-room.

A moment later, crawling through his tunnel with Peter close behind him, there was an exultant singing in Jolly Roger’s heart.  Again he was fleeing from the law, but always, as Yellow Bird had predicted in her sorcery, there were happiness and hope in his going.  And always there was someone to urge him on, and to take a pride in him, like Josephine Tavish.