A lull had come in the storm.
It was quiet and ominous stillness, and the ticking of a clock, old and gray like the Missioner himself, filled the room.

And Nada, seated on the edge of Father John's bed, no longer looked like the young girl of "seventeen goin' on eighteen." That afternoon, in the hidden jackpine open, with its sweet-scented jasmines, its violets and its crimson strawberries under their feet, the soul of a woman had taken possession of her body.

In that hour the first happiness of her life had come to her.

She had heard Jolly Roger McKay tell her those things which she already knew--that he was an outlaw, and that he was hiding down on the near-edge of civilization because the Royal Mounted were after him farther north--and that he was not fit to love her, and that it was a crime to let her love him.

It was then the soul of the woman had come to her in all its triumph.