Peter took time to swallow. His father had not told him how to answer questions. Then he pointed.
"From away off there, miles and miles. My father brought me until we could hear the axes, and then I came on alone. He's coming tonight or tomorrow."
"Is your mother with him?"
"She's dead."
He was not looking at her when she came to him and took his hand, and in all his life he had never felt such a warm, soft little hand clinging to his own as Mona Guyon's.
"My mother is dead, too, Peter," she said. "And so is my father. They were drowned—out there six years ago. It was Pierre Gourdon who brought me in from the rock."
It was an uncomfortable moment, and yet something of joy passed into Peter. His fingers, smoke-stained and soiled, tightened about Mona's hand as they both looked off over the cuttings to the wall of the vast forest that shut out Lake Superior from their view. They could plainly hear the distant murmuring of the surf.
"I'm glad you've come," she said. "I hope you're going to live here. Are you?"
"Maybe," said Peter.
"You're brave, and I like you. If you were that hateful Aleck Curry, who looks like a toad——"