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 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 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!