The moon did not come up that night. Darkness shut in the earth, and with it came a warm and sullen stillness, broken only by low intonations of distant thunder, advancing over the roofs of the forest. A long time after Simon had gone Peter went to the window and sat staring out into the gloom. The air was drowsily heavy and bore with it the cooling breath of rain. After a little a swift whispering ran through the forest and the first gentle patter of raindrops fell on the cabin roof. The thunder crashed nearer and vivid flashes of lightning cut like flaming knives through the blackness. In a moment, it seemed to Peter, the storm broke in a deluge that set the log walls atremble. It beat straight down, and did not come in at the window. Peter did not stir. As long ago as he could remember his father had taught him to be unafraid of the awesomeness and beauty of thunder and lightning, and many times they had watched a storm together until the boy was thrilled by the significance and the mystery of it.

It was his father he missed tonight, the immeasurable thrill of his voice, his presence and his love. Without reason his eyes strained questingly in those[138] brief moments when the lightning flashes filled the world with a white radiance. In that light he could see the mill, stark and vivid, like a skeleton illumined by fire, the trees, the cabins, the stub in which the flying squirrels lived, and the edge of the forest. He did not miss that half of his vision which he had lost in his fight with Aleck Curry; he had forgotten the fight, and even Mona Guyon. For a time his thoughts were alone with his father, and with his yearning and his loneliness an unreasonable hope filled his soul—the hope that his father would keep his promise and that out in the glare of the lightning he would see him coming from the forest into the clearing. His heart ached for that. He did not know it, but under his breath he was sobbing a little.

It was the truth, forcing itself upon him, the sullen, terrible truth, driving him back from the window and sending him creeping to his blankets, where he lay huddled and still. He had never hated anyone, not even Aleck Curry. But he was beginning to hate somebody—something—now. He hated the men who were after his father, and he was beginning vaguely to hate that controlling force which both his father and Simon McQuarrie had told him was the law. If his father had only taken him! If they were only together now, away out there in the forest, under a log or snuggled in the shelter of an overturned root—anywhere—just so they were together!

Why had his father lied to him, promising him he[139] would come back in a day or two? Why had he sent him on alone to Five Fingers? Peter choked back the sob in his throat. He knew. It was because his father loved him—because he knew that he could never return, and wanted him to have a home with Simon McQuarrie.

Burying his face in his arm, Peter gave up to his grief. It was a silent, choking grief that ate into his heart but brought no cry to his lips.

The thunder and lightning passed and the rain settled into a steady patter on the roof. It was like hundreds of gentle fingers tapping within a few feet of Peter's head. It comforted him in his aloneness and his grief. Mona was listening to that same friendly patter on the cedar shingles. Tomorrow he would see her again, and his heart grew warm. A part of her seemed to come into the darkness of his room, and he could see her eyes shining and feel the touch of her hand—and the kiss. And afterward he fell asleep, stirred by the strange and comforting sensation that Mona was near him.

But in sleep he lost her. He dreamed that he was trying to steal away from Five Fingers to go in search of his father, but again and again Simon McQuarrie caught him and brought him back. At last success came. It was night, and he was crawling out through his window into the moonlight, with a pack on his back. He jumped to the ground and made for the woods. And then a strange thing happened. Where his father[140] had left him he found footprints on the earth. They were very clear, and shining, as if made of bright silver, and they reached a long distance ahead of him through the forest. It puzzled him that his own feet left no trail at all while his father's trail was so clear.

Days and nights seemed to pass as he followed persistently this silvery trail. Then he came to a wonderful forest where the trees were so tall their tops seemed lost against the sky. He walked on flowers. Great masses of purple violets crushed under his feet, roses filled the air with sweetness, wild geraniums nodded and bowed to him, and crimson splashes of fire-flowers carpeted long aisles and broad chambers of this mysterious paradise.

He came at last to a waterfall. It did not roar, like waterfalls he had known, but fell with a rippling song. Near the waterfall was a cabin, and straight to the door of the cabin led the silvery trail! Peter followed it. He opened the door and went in and his father was there. He turned to greet Peter and did not seem surprised. His face was smiling and happy, and tender with the old cheer and the old love.

"I thought you would come soon, Peter," he said. "I've been waiting for you."

It was then Peter awakened. The patter of rain on the roof had ceased. The night had cleared and was filled with stars, and a sweet warmth came in through the open window. His dream had been overwhelmingly[141] real, and it left him with his heart beating strangely. He did not sleep again but lay awake until the stars began to fade in the gray light of dawn. Then he dressed himself, making no sound that might disturb Simon. When he looked down from his window he almost expected to see the marks he had made in his dream-leap. And it could be done—that jump! He crept out backward, lowered himself full length from the windowsill and dropped easily to the rain-softened earth.

He went toward the stream which came down from the timbered hills and ridges. The birds were beginning to sing, the robins first, twittering their sweetest of all songs, with eyes half closed. It grew gently, each soft note increasing in strength until the invisible chorus filled the clearing with its welcome to the day. A thrush joined in. Bright-winged bluebirds flew ahead of him, and sweet-voiced brush sparrows cheeped and fluttered in their coverts, waiting for the sun. Even the water dripping from the trees held in its sound the cadence of whispered song.

And as if this melody held a spell which they were powerless to combat, or which inspired them to silence, the raucous jays were still and aloof, the whisky jacks waited in fluffy brown balls, a cock-of-the-wood clung to the side of a tree, his plumed head and powerful bill making no sound upon the wood, and ahead of Peter a gray owl retreated to a deeper and darker hiding-place.

[142]

The forest was a cathedral, and its symphony seized upon Peter's soul and lifted it on a great wave of anticipation and hope.

His father was listening to the birds, too. He was waiting for the sunrise. And a stirring thought came to Peter. If his father did not return, he would do what he had done in his dream—go in search of him. He was sure he could find him.

He undressed at the edge of a pool in which the water was warm enough for a swim, and came out of it a little later shivering—but still thinking. The early rays of the sun were breaking over the tree-tops when he returned to the clearing. His bad eye was half open and most of the swelling was gone from his lips. Simon was getting breakfast and was surprised that Peter should come through the door instead of down the ladder.

During the next hour his shrewd eyes saw a change in the boy. Peter was restless and asked questions. Where would his father be likely to go? Had he said anything about it in his letter to Simon?

The Scotchman shook his head, guessing a little of what was in Peter's mind. He explained the vastness of the forests. They reached a thousand miles north and twice that far east and west, and one might lose himself in them all his life. Their bigness did not discourage Peter.

"I think I can find my father," he said. "If he doesn't come back I'm going to try."

[143]

The thought gripped him more tenaciously as the early hours of the morning passed. Simon brushed and mended him, and said he should have new clothes as quickly as they could be brought from the settlement on the railroad, and he talked of Aleck's defeat, and of Mona, and of the wonderful beaver colony two miles away, but the new thrill in Peter's blood swept over all other things that might have interested him.

He would not tell Simon, but he was going in search of his father—soon. It might be that night, or the next, if he could get things together for a pack.

The sun was well up when he saw Mona come out of the Gourdon cabin, and he went across the clearing to meet her. He was a little upset, for he would have to apologize for running away from her in such a boorish fashion yesterday. Mona's appearance this morning set his heart aflutter. She seemed almost as old as Adette Clamart, and not at all like the little fighting comrade who had helped him whip Aleck Curry at their first meeting. She was dressed in spotless white, and her long hair rippled and shone in the sun, and her dark eyes were so beautiful that for a moment or two Peter could find nothing to say as she looked at him.

Mona was not entirely unconscious of her disconcerting loveliness, and her eyes shone and the color grew prettier in her cheeks when she saw its effect on Peter.

"This is my Sunday dress," she said, helping him out of his embarrassment. "Do you like it?"

[144]

Peter shifted, and thought quickly. "You look like a snowbird, one of the kind with a black topknot," he complimented her. "What do you think of me?" And he turned so that she could see where Simon had mended his rusty clothes.

The sparkle died out of Mona's eyes, and in the moment when his back was toward her Peter did not see the look of pity and tenderness that took its place, and with it a shadow of something else, as if he had hurt her.

"I put on this dress for you. That's what I think of you, Peter."

"I got better clothes," he explained, "but we came away so fast we didn't have time to bring them."

"I'm glad you didn't. I like you the way you are. Do you like me, Peter—really?"

"A lot."

"How much?"

Peter turned over various terms of measurement in his mind. "Next to my father," he said.

"Then why did you run away from me when I was in the kitchen with Adette Clamart?" she asked.

Peter flushed. "I dunno. Guess I didn't like to be laughed at. And the baby—he didn't know who I was."

The soft notes of a bell tolled over the clearing, and Peter drew himself erect and breathed a little tensely as he listened to it. "I used to hear a church bell like[145] that, a long time ago," he said, softly. "I can just remember it."

She touched his arm as they listened. "I was coming to take you to church. Father Albanel says you promised."

She started down the slope, walking slowly, with Peter at her side. He thought it was interesting how the sound of the bell suddenly opened the doors of Five Fingers.

Pierre Gourdon came out of his cabin with his wife, and Josette was dressed in white, like Mona; and Marie Antoinette, waiting with Joe and their two children to greet them, looked like a slim white angel to Peter. Even Geertruda Poulin, who was almost as wide as she was high, wore a dress as white as the gull's wings down in Middle Finger Inlet.

The children were prim and starched and the men were in clothes which Peter had not seen them wear before, their faces shining with the effect of lather and sharp razors.

And loveliest of all the girls and women, Peter thought, was Mona—lovelier even than Adette Clamart, who came hurrying to them with laughing eyes and red lips and rebellious curls dancing about ............