Under the ash tree, for a few moments Peter was the boy again; the boy of yesterday, of years ago, when the world had held nothing for him but his father; and there was no change in the touch of the hands that had always given him comfort and courage and a love that was almost like a woman's in its gentleness. Not until Donald McRae held his boy off, with a hand on each shoulder, did something besides the madness of joy at his father's homecoming begin to thrust itself upon Peter. Then he saw the change—the naked breast, the half-bared arms, the mud and the rags, and the face and hair in which years had stamped their heels unpityingly. He tried to choke back his horror, to keep it out of his face, and to do this he laughed—laughed through the tears and sobbing breath—and pointed to a white birch tree in which a blue jay was screaming.

"The blue jay, dad!" he cried. "Remember that day—behind the log—with the blue jay in the tree-top, and the sapsucker pecking at our elbows, and the violets between my knees——"

The hands on his shoulders were relaxing.

"I've never seen a blue jay but what I've thought—of[212] you," said Donald McRae. "And the river—behind us—and how we got away from the police—and the rabbits we roasted—and—and——" The world was twisting and turning round again. He tried to smile, and reached out gropingly for Peter. "The swamp was hot, Peter. And I am tired—tired——"

Peter's arms caught him as he swayed. His thin face was whiter, and his eyes closed as he still tried to smile at his boy.

Mona, braiding her hair as she waited beyond the willows, heard Peter's frightened call. When she came running to him he was kneeling beside his father, cooling his face with water from the pond. Donald McRae lay upon the grass. He was scarcely breathing, and under the scrub of beard his emaciated face was like wax. An agony of fear and grief had driven the happiness out of Peter's face, and he tried to speak as he looked up at Mona.

She saw what had happened as she knelt beside him and took Donald McRae's head tenderly in her arms. Excitement and his last great effort to fight down his weakness had given a semblance of strength to this shell of a man. But it was gone now, and the full measure of its tragedy struck like a charge of lead to Peter's heart.

Mona, feeling Peter's grief, and guessing swiftly the thought that had made his wordless lips white and trembling, said to comfort him: "He hasn't been this way long, Peter. It was the swamp. He told me the[213] police were after him, and he hid himself there. The heat—bad water——"

She tried futilely to explain away the horror of the thing—to make Peter believe this wreck of a man was not the product of months and years of hardship and suffering, but had reached his condition because of a passing torment that had covered only a few days in the swamp. But she knew she was failing, and she stopped before she had finished, with her head bowed before Peter's eyes. She heard his tense lips whisper "the police" as if the words choked him as they came out, and then he went down again to the edge of the pool for water. She wet her handkerchief when he returned and held it over Donald's eyes, and Peter unlaced the worn-out, muddy boots—and suddenly a sound came from him, a little cry of unutterable understanding as his hand found in the trampled grass the half-eaten carrot which his father had dropped.

She had never seen Peter's face so white, and never before had she seen a look in his blue eyes so unlike the Peter she had grown up with, and played with, and loved.

"He is breathing easier," she said. "It was the excitement, the shock——"

He nodded, and replied in a dead, even voice: "I know what it was, Ange. I know." He took one of his father's hands and held it between his own, looking at the face in Mona's arms into which life was beginning to return and breath to come more evenly. "It[214] has been a long time, dad. Six years—six years like those three days when the police were hunting us in the forest, and you caught rabbits for me to eat. But it is ended now."

Mona's heart throbbed. "We will keep him with us, Peter—always! We will hide him—somewhere—never let him go away again! Oh, it will be easy for us to do that, and Father Albanel—and Simon—will help us——"

A deeper breath trembled on Donald McRae's lips, but it was not that breath, or the faint moan that came with it, that stopped her before she had finished. Peter was looking over her head at something beyond her. He dropped his father's hand, and what she saw in his face drew a gasping cry from her even before she knew its cause. She turned and looked. And then, in an instant, she was on her feet with Peter.

So quietly that no sound of footfall or breaking twig had given warning of his approach, a man had stolen upon them. He stood not a dozen feet away, dressed in the field service uniform of the Provincial Police. That was the first terrible fact which telegraphed itself to her brain; the man was an officer, he was after Donald McRae, and he had caught them! But this first alarm gave place to a greater shock as her eyes saw the face above the uniform. It was a large, coarse face streaming with sweat; the lips were heavy, the nose big, and the eyes were small and too close together for one who bulked so large. It was a[215] face filled with triumph—an exultation which the man made dramatically poignant as he stood with his heavy hands on his hips, looking from one to the other with a smile that was deadly in its promise twisting the corners of his mouth.

He did not speak, did not even move, but waited while his presence crushed like a weight of horror upon the two who were staring at him. His eyes rested on Mona, and the wicked gleam in them—the thought which they could not hide, merciless, sure, almost gloating—drew his name from her lips in a cry that was filled with fear, with half disbelief, with a note that almost called for pity.

"Aleck—Curry!"

The man's heavy head nodded, but he did not speak. It was still too great a moment of triumph to be broken by voice. He looked at Peter, and then, slowly, significantly, at the unconscious form of Peter's father. God could not have given him a greater hour than this! For if it had not been for that man and for Peter, he might have had the girl. It was Peter who had come in his way from that first day when they had fought over Mona in the edge of the clearing; it was Peter who had whipped him, Peter whom he had grown to hate above all other things on earth—and it was Peter's heart and soul and happiness, almost his very life, that he now held in the hollow of his hand!

And he would make him pay.

"Yes, it is ended now," he said, repeating Peter's[216] words of a few moments before. "And I'm rather glad. The swamp was hot and filled with mosquitoes."

Something clinked as he fumbled at his belt and the sound sent a chill of horror through Mona. He held out the manacle irons so that she could see them.

"I've got to do it," he said, a mocking apology in his voice. "Distasteful, but necessary." He faced Peter. "Your father knew we were close behind him, and it won't do him any good to play dead. He's slippery, and I'm going to put these on him. I guess——" He swung his heavy head toward Mona again. "I guess Father Albanel and old Simon can't help him very much from now on. It was nice of you to think of it, though, Mona. You were always so tender-hearted—when it came to Peter!"

He was still the old bully and his voice trembled with the suppression of his triumph. This was his master stroke. It was not capture of the man whom the law would condemn to hang that thrilled him most; it was the twisted beauty in Mona's face, the shock and terror in her eyes, and the helplessness and despair he saw in Peter's. He did not hurry, did not call for an instant upon the dignity of the law, but twisted the knife of his vengeance slowly.

When Mona's eyes turned from him to Peter her heart stood still. He was gray. There was no blood in his lips. He was looking down upon the still, upturned face of his father, and his hands were clenched. When he raised his head she saw that his eyes were no longer[217] Peter's eyes. He advanced slowly toward Aleck Curry, and the manacles rattled as Aleck dropped them to his belt and shifted a hand to his pistol holster.

Peter did not hear the click of steel or sense the menace of the shifting hand. One thought pounded maddeningly in his brain; his father had come back to him, he was home, and in the first hour of his return this beast had come into their lives again to break down every hope and prayer they had built up during the years. In Aleck Curry he saw not only that merciless law which had run his father like a rat from hole to hole, but a monster of vicious hate, a lustful, bullying boy grown into a still more vicious giant—and Peter's desire was to kill him.

Mona saw the deadly intent in his slow advance even as Aleck Curry saw it. She saw more—the hand on the pistol, the tightening fingers, the dangerous gleam that flashed in Aleck's eyes—and Peter with only his naked hands! A cry of warning came to her lips—of a terror which robbed her of the power to move. The cry ended in a scream, for as Peter leaped in, Aleck raised the pistol and fired. A terrible sickness came over her, a sickness which for an instant swept away her strength.

Peter felt the hot breath of the pistol in his face and the explosion was so near it fell like a blow against his eardrums. It was not a shot intended only to frighten him, for death had missed him by less than the width of his hand. Aleck released the trigger of his[218] automatic and crooked his finger again, but even quicker than that movement was Peter, who flung himself with all his weight under his enemy's arm as the second shot was fired. He did not strike, but with both hands clutched Aleck's wrist, and at the same time tripped his foe so that they went to the earth together, with Aleck on his back.

In this instant there came upon Peter a crushing realization of the almost deadly odds against him. Into every nerve of his body flashed the truth—that he was fighting a man who wanted to kill him, who in reality had the right to kill him, and whom the law would not only vindicate but would commend for killing him. He was an outlaw, fighting against the almighty omniscience of that law, and what the world would regard as justice. And his survival now, like that of his father, depended upon beating it. He must break his enemy's wrist. Get the gun. Kill or be killed.

Every ounce of his strength he exerted upon the wrist as Aleck flung his free arm in a powerful and throttling embrace about his neck. He drew the ............