[ "We'll make it, Peter," she whispered. . . . . . . Frontispiece ]
[ "I've come to tell you things, Nada. I've been living a lie." ]
[ They hurried to the camp, the children racing ahead to tell the news. ]
[ "—a squaw named Yellow Bird sent word that you would be welcome." ]
A glass of wine once lost a kingdom, a nail turned the tide of a mighty battle, and a woman's smile once upon a time destroyed the homes of a million people. Thus have trivial things played their potent parts in the history of human lives; yet these things Peter did not know.
THE COUNTRY BEYOND
CHAPTER I
Not far from the rugged and storm-whipped north shore of Lake Superior, and south of the Kaministiqua, yet not as far south as the Rainy River waterway, there lay a paradise lost in the heart of a wilderness world—and in that paradise "a little corner of hell."
That was what the girl had called it once upon a time, when sobbing out the shame and the agony of it to herself. That was before Peter had come to leaven the drab of her life. But the hell was still there.