This afternoon, as they lay in the sleepy quiet of June, Jolly Roger answered the questioning inquisitiveness in Peter’s face and eyes.

“You see, Pied-Bot, it was this way,” he said, beginning a little apologetically.  “I was dying for something to read, and I figgered there’d be something on the Mail—­newspapers, you know.  So I stopped it, and tied up the driver, and found these.  And I swear I didn’t take anything else—­that time.  There’s twenty of them, and they weigh nine pounds, and in the last two years I’ve toted them five thousand miles.  I wouldn’t trade them for my weight in gold, and I’m pretty heavy.  I named you after one of them—­Peter.  I pretty near called you Christopher Columbus.  And some day we’ve got to take these books to the man they were going to, Peter.  I’ve promised myself that.  It seems sort of like stealing the soul out of someone.  I just borrowed them, that’s all.  And I’ve kept the address of the owner, away up on the edge of the Barrens.  Some day we’re going to make a special trip to take the books home.”

Peter, all at once, had become interested in something else, and following the direction of his pointed nose Jolly Roger saw Nada standing quietly on the opposite side of the stream, looking at them.  In a moment Peter knew her, and he was trembling in every muscle when Jolly Roger caught him up under his arm, and with a happy laugh plunged through the creek with him.  For a good five minutes after that Jolly Roger stood aside watching Peter and Nada, and there was a glisten of dampness in his eyes when he saw the wet on Nada’s cheeks, and the whimpering joy of Peter as he caressed her face and hands.  Three weeks had been a long time to Peter, but he could see no difference in the little mistress he worshipped.  There were still the radiant curls to hide his nose in, the gentle hands, the sweet voice, the warm thrill of her body as she hugged him in her arms.  He did not know that she had new shoes and a new dress, and that some of the color had gone from her red lips, and that her cheeks were paler, and that she could no longer hide the old haunted look in her eyes.

But Jolly Roger saw the look, and the growing pallor, and had noted them for two weeks past.  And later that afternoon, when Nada returned to Cragg’s Ridge, and he re-crossed the stream with Peter, there was a hard and terrible look in his eyes which Peter had caught there more and more frequently of late.  And that evening, in the twilight of their cabin, Jolly Roger said,

“It’s coming soon, Peter.  I’m expecting it.  Something is happening which she won’t tell us about.  She is afraid for me.  I know it.  But I’m going to find out—­soon.  And then, Pied-Bot, I think we’ll probably kill Jed Hawkins, and hit for the North.”