I tried to keep him from doin' it, but I couldn't--I couldn't--" Jolly Roger heard no more.

He was out of the door, and running across the open, with Peter racing close behind him.

They struck the road, and Jolly Roger swung into it, and continued to run until the breath was out of his lungs.

And all that time the things Nada had told him about Jed Hawkins and the tie-cutter were rushing madly through his brain.

An hour or two ago, when the words had come from her lips in the jackpine thicket, he had believed that Nada was frightened, that a distorted fear possessed her, that such a thing as she had half confessed to him was too monstrous to happen.