Even as he walked back and forth he listened intently for Breault's footsteps.

Peter, with a sigh, gave up his scratching and settled himself on his haunches close to Nada's door.
Father John, in passing him, paused to lay a hand on his head.
"Some day it may please God to let us go to them," he consoled, speaking for himself even more than for Peter.

"Some day, when they are far away--and safe." He felt Peter suddenly stiffen under his hand, and from the Leaf Bud came a low, swift word of warning.
She began singing softly, and dishes and pans already clean rattled under her hands in the kitchen, and she continued to sing even as the cabin door opened and Breault the man-hunter stood in it.
The unexpectedness of his appearance, without the sound of a warning footstep outside, was amazing even to Peter.

In the open door he stood for a moment, his thin, ferret-like face standing out against the black background of the night, and his strange eyes, apparently half closed yet bright as diamonds, sweeping the interior without effort but with the quickness of lightning.
There was something deadly and foreboding about him as he stood here, and Peter growled low in his throat.

Recognition flashed upon him in an instant.