Even Peter seemed to sense the argument and condemnation that was passing behind McKay’s unsmiling eyes.  He did not move, but lay squatted on his belly, with his nose straight out on the ground between his forepaws.  It was his attitude of self-immolation.  His acknowledgment of the other’s right to strike with lash or club.  Yet in his eyes, bright and steady behind his mop of whiskers, Jolly Roger saw a prayer.

Without a word he held out his arms.  It was all Peter needed, and in a moment he was hugged up close against McKay.  After all, there was a mighty something that reached from heart to heart of these two, and Jolly Roger said, with a sound that was half laugh and half sob in his throat,

“Pied-Bot, you devil—­you little devil—­”

His fingers closed in the cloth about Peter’s neck, and his heart jumped when he saw what it was—­a piece of Nada’s dress.  Peter, realizing that at last the importance of his mission was understood, waited in eager watchfulness while his master untied the knot.  And in another moment, out in the clean and glorious sun that had followed storm, McKay held the shining tress of Nada’s hair.

It was a real sob that broke in his throat now, and Peter saw him crush the shining thing to his face, and hold it there, while strange quivers ran through his strong shoulders, and a wetness that was not rain gathered in his eyes.

“God bless her!” he whispered.  And then he said, “I wish I was a kid, Peter—­a kid.  Because—­if I ever wanted to cry—­it’s now”

In his face, even with the tears and the strange quivering of his lips, Peter saw a radiance that was joy.  And McKay stood up, and looked south, back over the trail he had followed through the blackness and storm of night.  He was visioning things.  He saw Nada in Father John’s cabin, urging Peter out into the wild tumult of thunder and lightning with that precious part of her which she knew he would love forever.  Her last message to him.  Her last promise of love and faith until the end of time.

He guessed only the beginning of the truth.  And Peter, denied the power of thought transmission because of an error in the creation of things, ran back a little way over the trail, trying to tell his master that Nada had come with him through the storm, and was back in the deep forest calling for him to return.

But McKay’s mind saw nothing beyond the dimly lighted room of the Missioner’s cabin.

He pressed his lips to the silken tress of Nada’s hair, still damp with the rain; and after that, with the care of a miser he smoothed it out, and tied the end of the tress tightly with a string, and put it away in the soft buckskin wallet which he carried.

There was a new singing in his heart as he gathered sticks with which to build a small fire, for after this he would not travel quite alone.

That day they went on; and day followed day, until August came, and north—­still farther north they went into the illimitable wilderness which reached out in the drowsing stillness of the Flying-up-Month—­the month when newly fledged things take to their wings, and the deep forests lie asleep.