quietly mona went out to meet peter. "he is sleeping," she said, as peter's arm closed about her in the thickening darkness. "if he can only pass the night that way he will be strong and well again in the morning." yet her voice trembled as she tried to bring him comfort. "aleck is safe?" she whispered. "he is on the island?"
"yes, he is safe for tonight—and maybe for a number of days. after that——"
he stopped, not knowing how to finish, and mona's soft hand caressed his cheek. "we will tell simon, and uncle pierre, and father albanel," she suggested. "surely they will know how to help us!"
"i've been thinking about that," he said slowly, with his lips against her hair. "you must promise me not to tell them, mona. i think it is necessary. at least they must not know until tomorrow or the next day. will you remember that?"
"you are sure it is best?"
"i believe so."
"then i will remember."
they drew near to the door of the cabin and[228] listened. faintly they could hear donald mcrae's breath as he slept.
"i must take you home," he whispered.
they hurried through the gloom, hand in hand. in half an hour they had reached the cliff trail that led to five fingers, and here mona insisted that peter turn back, while she went on alone. she was glad pierre and josette were at joe's house when she came to the settlement. she called good night to them through the open door, and went to her room, with the excuse that she was tired.
she sat down at her window, and watched the moon come up. later she heard pierre and josette when they returned. and after that, one after another, the lights went out in five fingers until the cabins lay like great shadows in the slumbering stillness. in this stillness she heard the clock in her bedroom tick off every second of the hours.
until now she had never believed that answered prayer could bring with it a grimness and torture of tragedy like that which had descended upon her life and peter's. passionately she sobbed out her hatred for aleck curry, the monster who at last had descended upon them with his vengeance.
as the hours dragged on she found herself fighting more and more desperately against the desire to steal quietly from her room, tiptoe down the stairs and go to simon mcquarrie's cabin that she might confide in him all that had happened that afternoon. only[229] peter's warning to keep their secret locked tightly in her own breast held her back. yet in simon rested her last hope, for from the first day peter had come into the old scotchman's life he had found home—and a protection and love which in mona's thoughts made him almost of simon's flesh and blood. the impulse to go to him—to be false to peter for the first time in her life—was a torment in her brain, and where one little voice had urged her at first, a hundred added to their insistence now. slowly the revolt became a conviction that it was right and reasonable she should go to simon, in spite of her promise to peter.
quietly she opened the door to her room and went down the stairs, making no sound to disturb pierre and josette gourdon. a slim, pale figure, she crossed the clearing and paused in the shadow of the cabin where the scotchman lived. instinctively she looked up at peter's window even though she knew he was in the forest with his father. then she knocked on the door. her heart throbbed as she listened for a response inside. it seemed to beat loudly, as if crying out against her faithlessness in breaking a promise to peter. she knocked again, and in a moment she could hear mcquarrie moving. she counted his slow footsteps as they came across the floor. then the door opened, and his tall, gaunt figure stood above her, swathed in a nightgown that fell to the toes of his feet. at any other time mona would have laughed at the grotesqueness of his appearance as he stared[230] down into her white face, with a nightcap on the back of his head.
he reached out a hand. "ange!" he gasped. "you! what is the matter?"
she slipped past him and closed the door.
"please light a lamp," she said. "please——"
simon struck a match. the flare of it illumined his face, tense and set in its amazement. when the lamp was lighted he took down a coat from a peg in the wall and put it on. then he turned to mona again. she stood before him with her hands clasped at her breast, and in her dark eyes was a look that alarmed him. and he could see in her bare throat the little heart-beating throb that always came when she was stirred by deep emotion.
with a desperate little cry she caught his hand. "something terrible has happened," she whispered. "something—you should know. but i promised peter. i promised him i would tell no one—not even you. but i've got to turn that promise into a lie. if i don't——" the words broke on her lips. and then: "peter's father has come back. he is with peter now in the cabin near the beaver pond!"
simon mcquarrie stood back from her, his hands dropping slowly and limply to his sides. then he raised one of them as if to brush a shadow from his forehead, and his nightcap fell to the floor. "donald mcrae—has come back!" he repeated, and the deep lines in his face softened as mona looked at him, and[231] joy trembled in his voice when he spoke. "thank god, ange! why do you think it is so terrible? we have waited and hoped for a long time——" he stopped. what he saw in her face and eyes swept a sudden change into his own, and he caught her arm as the gladness died on his lips. "has anything happened?" he demanded. "has anything happened—to peter—or to donald mcrae?"
she began telling him in a low voice, while simon stared at her with his big hands reaching out as if to grip at something in the space between them.
"i was at the beaver pond when peter's father staggered out of the willows and almost fell at my feet. i didn't know who the man was, but he was sick and tired and starving—so hungry he ate carrots i had meant for the beavers. i gave him our lunch, and while he was eating i learned he was peter's father. it made me happy. peter was coming to join me, and i told donald mcrae. he begged me not to let peter know he was there. he wanted to hide in the bushes, and look at him without being seen, and then go away again. he said that was why he had come back—just to get a look at his boy. he told me the police were after him again, that they were driving him like a rat from hole to hole, and that his presence could only bring unhappiness and tragedy to peter. so he hid in the willows, and peter came."
"and then?"
"in the end peter's father staggered out of the[232] bushes, and i left them together. peter called me a little later and i ran back. donald mcrae was on the ground and at first i thought he was dead. not until then did i realize how terribly sick and weak he was. we were on our knees beside him when he looked up, and there—there—grinning down at us—was the man peter's father had been running away from. oh, he was terrible—big and sweaty and leering down at us, almost laughing in his triumph, and—simon—simon—it was aleck curry!"
her despair broke in a sobbing cry, and now the bones of simon's great hands made a snapping sound as he clenched them, and his thin, hard face was gray in the glow of the lamp. "what happened then, mona?"
"when aleck went to put the manacles on peter's father there was a fight—a terrible fight—and aleck tried to kill peter with a gun. he shot twice. i helped with a stone, and at last peter got him into the pond, and almost drowned him. his father was still unconscious when we carried him to the cabin. then peter took aleck down to his boat and to the little rock island two miles out from the shore. he is there now—a prisoner. and—what will happen to peter? what can the law do to him?"
simon paced slowly back and forth across the floor. his face was a mask of iron. his long nightgown flapped about his feet, and again his big, hard hands hung limp and straight at his sides.
[233]
"if aleck escapes from the island and arrests peter, or reports the affair to headquarters, it means the penitentiary," he said as if speaking to himself rather than to mona. "and that is what will happen—if curry has his way. he hates peter. he would like to see donald mcrae hung, and peter in prison, and you——" a tigerish gleam was in his eyes as he faced her. "why didn't peter kill him when he had the chance?" he cried, as for a single moment his self-control broke its leash. "as a boy he was a brute and a bully, and as a man his soul is that of a monster—even though now he is a part of the law. he wanted you—always. i know it and could see it even when you were children. and for what he wants he would wreck the world. why didn't peter kill him? why—with these two hands——" he reached out his long arms and his fingers closed like talons of steel. then he checked his passion. his arms dropped again. "but it is best he didn't," he finished. "it is best—even though a snake has a better right to live than aleck curry!"
he continued his pacing across the floor, and with each step his stern face grew harder until at last it seemed to have no emotion at all—the hard, set, fighting face which simon mcquarrie always turned upon his enemies. for a few moments he seemed to forget mona. then he asked: "what is peter going to do? what does he plan to do?"
the question was so sharp it sent a little shiver[234] through her, and simon's eyes were looking at her with the steely coldness of ice.
"i don't know. peter doesn't know—except that he means to keep aleck curry on the island until his father is well and can get safely away."
simon grunted. "you mean the rock with nothing on it—two miles straight out from the beaver pond?"
"yes."
the fingers of simon's hands were twisting again.
"constable carter dropped in on us late this afternoon," he said shortly. "he told pierre and dominique he was on his way into the georgian bay country and would rest here for a few days. he lied. he's working with aleck curry, and if aleck doesn't show up soon—if he starts smoke signals going out on the island, and carter sees them——"
"aleck hasn't any matches," mona interrupted him quickly. "peter took them away from him."
simon's face was lightened for an instant by a flash of exultation. "peter is improving," he conceded. "if he had only used as good judgment at the beaver pond, when he could have rid us of this snake forever——"
mona's cry of horror stopped him. in a moment he was at her side, and his long arms were about her tenderly. "i didn't mean that, ange!" he cried, trying to laugh as he saw the agony of fear in her eyes. "it's a bad situation, so bad that i don't see a way out for peter just now—but we won't kill aleck, and we'll get[235] peter out of it somehow. he was right in making you promise not to tell anyone, and i'll keep it all to myself—even from peter and my old friend donald mcrae—until carter leaves the settlement. i'll manage to get him away in a day or two. and meanwhile you and peter must keep curry on the island, and watch every step you take so that carter won't get suspicious. and above everything else—most important of all—don't tell peter you have confided in me. let me know everything that happens, but don't tell peter that i know. do you understand, mona?"
she felt the suppression of something in his voice that was unlike simon mcquarrie, something that thrilled and frightened her, yet she nodded her head and said: "yes, i understand. i won't let peter know. and i'll tell you—everything."
his arms drew her a little closer, and in him above all other men she had faith in that moment. she did not see his face above her, a face which for a single instant darkened with a look so pitiless and menacing that even simon sensed the danger of its betrayal, and held her for a moment longer. then with the gentleness which love for mona and peter had bred into his stern nature, he led her to the door.
"you must go home now, and to bed," he said. "it is your fight as well as peter's, and you mustn't let anyone see that you are worried tomorrow—especially carter." he opened the door. "good night, ange!"
[236]
"good night!" she whispered as she slipped out.
he closed the door and listened for a moment to her retreating footsteps. when he faced the lamp and looked up at peter's room, a new and strange light was in his eyes, and he spoke softly, as if to the spirit of someone who was waiting and listening up there.
"it's my turn now, and i'll care for peter," he said. "a long time ago donald mcrae killed the man who insulted his mother, and it is no more than right and just that simon mcquarrie should kill the man who would destroy her boy."
then, slowly, he began to dress.
for a little while mona hesitated in the shadow of the tall spruce tree that grew not far from simon's door. she could hear her heart beating as she looked back at the light in the cabin. she was glad it was over, glad she had told simon the truth, even as she thought of her promise to peter.
yet one thing she had kept to herself, and for a moment she felt the urge to go back and confide in the iron-willed scotchman her own personal fear of aleck curry. never until this night had she been afraid of him. she had defied and hated him as a young girl, and as she grew older had loathed and repulsed him for the persistence of his passion. to fear him had never entered her head, even in the days when once or twice she had used her hands in defending herself against, his unwelcome attentions.
but now she knew that aleck's hour had come.[237] even though he was temporarily a prisoner on the island, he held her happiness and peter's fate in the hollow of his hand. that fact, its significance, its terrible import for her, she had seen in aleck's exultant face and eyes at the pool. in that hour his joy and triumph was not that he had run down peter's father, but that she at last had come within the reach of his desires. and the fight had added to his mastery, for it had outlawed peter and had given to the man she hated the final power to wreck her world. and she, of all that world, was the only one who knew what aleck's price for the freedom of those she loved would be.
the thought was a monstrous thing in her brain. she had fought it, had beaten it back with the strength of her will, and she struggled with it again as she turned away from the light in simon's window. her hands clenched and a bit of savagery leaped through her blood as she went again through the moonlight. she had seen the deadly fire in the scotchman's eyes, and that fire was now in her own. over and over she told herself that she was still unafraid of aleck curry. her lips whispered the words. but in her heart, fixed and implacable, remained the fear.
she had almost reached the shadow of pierre gourdon's cabin when a figure stepped out to meet her. it was peter. his startled face questioned her in the moonlight.
"i thought you were asleep," he said in a low voice.[238] "and so—i was passing under your window. i wanted to be near you for a few moments."
he put his arms about her and looked anxiously into her face, and then he laid his lips against her soft hair.
"it was impossible." she shivered against him. "i undressed, as you told me to do, and i went to bed. but i had to get up. i kept thinking, thinking—until i felt like screaming, or jumping out of my window and running to you."
"you are a little frightened, ange—after what happened at the pool. but it will all come out right. aleck is safe. he can't harm us——"
she looked up quickly, and saw in his eyes the same look that had been in simon's. her arms tightened about him.
"peter, you don't need to hide anything from me," she protested. "we're both thinking the same thing—afraid of the same thing. it's aleck curry—and what he will do when he gets off the island. we can keep him there until your father is well, and safe. but after that—what will happen to you?"
peter tried to laugh. "they can't do anything worse than send me to prison, and if they do that—would you mind waiting for me, ange?"
she knew the effort he was making to speak lightly, almost playfully, and her heart throbbed with the eager quickness of her answer. "i would wait for you all my life, peter."
[239]
with a sudden movement he drew her into the shadow of the cabin. his eyes were searching the farther edge of the clearing.
"look!" he said.
her eyes pierced the moon glow. and then, dimly, she saw a moving shadow. it came nearer, and turned toward simon's cabin. instinctively she guessed who it was, but waited for peter to speak.
"i found him nosing around when i returned to the settlement," he said. "a little while ago he was here, looking up at your window; then he went to simon's, and afterward sneaked off into the edge of the forest. i don't know who he is, but i was within ten feet of him and he wears a uniform like aleck's. he is watching for dad. he is also suspicious and is wondering why aleck doesn't show up."
"his name is carter," said mona. "he came to five fingers this afternoon."
