Peter drew slowly away. His face was gray in the firelight and in his eyes was a growing horror. He tried to speak but no words came from his lips. Donald's scarred face was strangely tranquil. It seemed to Peter that years had dropped away from it. In it was no fear, no sign of strain, no consciousness of the terrible hours they had passed through or of the tragic future which lay ahead. And the truth came to Peter, a suspicion at first, a whisper, growing and overwhelming him until at last it was a dizzying sickness that set him swaying on his feet. In this hour Donald McRae was not the man who had returned after years of wandering to see his boy. His mind had gone back. It had returned to the days of Peter's childhood and his voice was repeating words almost forgotten—a sacred promise of days when Peter had built mighty castles in the air and his father had helped him plan them with the understanding smile that was on his lips now.
For he was saying: "They won't hurt a boy, Peter. We'll get away. And then we'll go through the big woods to the mountains just as we've always wanted to do."
Peter raised clenched hands to his face to stifle his agony.
In the torturing slowness of the hours which followed Donald McRae lived again in the precious years when Peter was a boy, recalling forgotten incidents as if they had happened yesterday, bringing forth their old dreams, painting their pictures of the future as he had done so often with Peter at his side in the afterglow of evenings long ago. And Peter, with his soul torn and bleeding, talked with him. Together they were hunting again. They followed the old trap-lines. They heard the song of birds and planted seeds and flowers in the little garden back of their cabin home, and Peter was kneeling at his father's knees when he said his prayers at night. These things Peter had dreamed of and treasured in his years at Five Fingers, but now they were horrors—coming out of the past with a voice that trembled with the thrill and joy of a strange madness.
At last Donald slept. It was after midnight and the last embers of the fire had burned out. Peter rose to his feet and walked up the shore, staring into darkness. The rock walls that inclosed the inlet rose sheer above him, making of the place a deep and sombrous pit. He could see the stars and their distance lent an abysmal solitude to the gloom. About him was no movement and no stir of life; the water lay still; no whisper came from dark forests on the ridge tops; the black walls were dead and in the soft sand his feet alone disturbed the sepulchral quiet.
To Peter this strangeness seemed naturally a part of the change that had come into his life. Everything was changed. His world had gone into atoms and now it was reassembling itself; and with deadened emotions, almost dully, he was beginning to accept it. His yesterdays, it seemed, had existed an infinitely long time ago. Five Fingers was no longer home or a necessity and even Mona seemed a vast distance away from him in these hours when his own soul was remolding itself to fit the grimness of a new existence. His mind no longer questioned the path he was to take and no shadow of revolt rose in it.
One thought was as steadfastly fixed in him now as life itself. He belonged to his father and his father belonged utterly to him. He must go on with him, care for him, fight for him, save him from that one dread brutality of the law if his own life paid the forfeit in the end. That was settled. Even his love for Mona could not change that duty and older love which urged him. It was more than a resolution; it was as immutably a part of him as the beating of his heart and his own flesh and blood.
The stars faded and day broke swiftly above the walls of the inlet. He returned and found his father on his hands and knees groping in the sand. He was gathering sticks and placing them with the remnants of last night's fire, and when he heard Peter's footsteps he paused in his labor and raised a face out of which once more the years of grief and hopelessness seemed to have gone.