He followed, so quietly that she was through the break, and was picking her way among the tumbled masses of rock along the farther foot of the ridge, before she discovered his presence.

With a glad cry she caught him up in her arms and hugged him against her breast.
"Peter, Peter, where have you been ?" she demanded.

"I thought something had happened to you, and I've been huntin' for you, and so has Roger--I mean Mister Jolly Roger." Peter was hugged tighter, and he hung limply until his mistress came to a thick little clump of dwarf balsams hidden among the rocks.

It was their "secret place," and Peter had come to sense the fact that its mystery was not to be disclosed.

Here Nada had made her little bower, and she sat down now upon a thick rug of balsam boughs, and held Peter out in front of her, squatted on his haunches.