His hands clenched slowly for he knew that under the cross lay the body of Jed Hawkins, the fiend who had destroyed his world.

After that he re-entered the cabin and went into Nada’s room, closing the door behind him; and for many minutes thereafter Peter remained outside guarding the outer door, and hearing no sound or movement from within.

When Jolly Roger came out his face was set and white, and he looked where the thick forest had stood on that stormy night when he ran down the trail toward Mooney’s cabin.  There was no forest now.  But he found the old tie-cutters’ road, cluttered as it was with the debris of fire, and he knew when he came to that twist in the trail where long ago Jed Hawkins had lain dead on his back.  Half a mile beyond he came to the railroad.  Here it was that the fire had burned hottest, for as far as his vision went he could see no sign of life or of forest green alight in the waning sun.

And now there fell upon him, along with the desolation of despair, a something grimmer and more terrible—­a thing that was fear.  About him everywhere reached this graveyard of death, leaving no spot untouched.  Was it possible that Nada and the Missioner had not escaped its fury?  The fear settled upon him more heavily as the sun went down and the gloom of evening came, bringing with it an unpleasant chill and a cloying odor of things burned dead.

He did not talk to Peter now.  There was a lamp in the cabin and wood behind the stove, and silently he built a fire and trimmed and lighted the wick when darkness came.  And Peter, as if hiding from the ghosts of yesterday, slunk into a corner and lay there unmoving and still.  And McKay did not get supper nor did he smoke, but after a long time he carried his blankets into Nada’s room, and spread them out upon her bed.  Then he put out the light and quietly laid himself down where through the nights of many a month and year Nada had slept in the moon glow.

The moon was there tonight.  The faint glow of it rose in the east and swiftly it climbed over the ragged shoulder of Cragg’s Ridge, flooding the blackened world with light and filling the room with a soft and golden radiance.  It was a moon undimmed, full and round and yellow; and it seemed to smile in through the window as if some living spirit in it had not yet missed Nada, and was embracing her in its glory.  And now it came upon Jolly Roger why she had loved it even more than she had loved the sun; for through the little window it shut out all the rest of the world, and sitting up, he seemed to hear her heart beating at his side and clearly he saw her face in the light of it and her slim arms out-reaching, as if to gather it to her breast.  Thus—­many times, she had told him—­had she sat up in her bed to greet the moon and to look for the smiling face that was almost always there, the face of the Man in the Moon, her friend and playmate in the sky.