Without warning he was suddenly smothered in a pair of arms, his head was jerked back, and against his hard and pitiless mouth a pair of soft red lips pressed for a single thrilling instant.

"Well, I'll be damned," he gasped, dropping his bacon and staggering to his feet like a man who had been shot.

"I'll be--CUSSED!" And he picked up his pack and walked off into the thick young spruce at the edge of the timber, without saying another word or once looking behind him.

And breakfast waited, and Nada and Jolly Roger and Peter waited, but Frangois Breault did not return.

For a strange and unaccountable man was he, a hard and pitiless man and a deadly hunter who knew no fear.