The other stared, half disbelieving. "Is that you—Carter?" he gasped. He advanced again, peering into the other's face. "By Heaven, it is!"
Carter was very white and thin and strange-looking in the moonlight, and Aleck Curry was heavy and huge, even to his neck and face. He thrust out a hand, but Carter did not touch it.
"Yes, it's me," he said, in a voice cold as ice. "Queer why you should be coming this way, Curry. I was going down there to find you."
Aleck's eyes pierced the blanket of moonlight behind him. "What luck?" he asked. His voice thrilled with nervous eagerness. He bent his big shoulders toward Carter, looking into his face, his thick lips parted and his narrow eyes gleaming anxiously as he tried to read an answer before words came. "Any?"
Carter's slowness was an insult, and with that insult his eyes and lips were smiling.
"Yes, I've had luck," he said, when the tenseness of the other's silence seemed about to break. "Donald McRae is dead, and Peter is back there—my prisoner!"
Half an hour later, down in Five Fingers, the bell over the little log church rang out sweetly and softly the good news that Father Albanel had come in from his monthly trip into the farther wilderness, and that services would be held tomorrow, which was Sunday. In the stillness of the night the music of the bell carried far through the forests, creeping in and out and high above the hidden places, bearing with it the peace and gentleness of benediction and prayer to all things.
Peter heard it, far back in the hollows between the ridges, and he paused to offer his gratitude to God for this voice that was welcoming him home.