wasn't for her," she breathed. "She treats me like a witch most of
the time, but Jed Hawkins made her that way. I kin remember--"

Suddenly she jumped up, and flung back her head defiantly, so that
her hair streamed out in a sun-filled cloud in a gust of wind that
came up the valley.

"Some day, I'll kill 'im," she cried to the black forest across
the plain. "Some day--I will!"





CHAPTER II


She followed Peter. For a long time the storm had been gathering
in her brain, a storm which she had held back, smothered under her
unhappiness, so that only Peter had seen the lightning-flashes of
it. But today the betrayal had forced itself from her lips, and in
a hard little voice she had told Jolly Roger--the stranger who had
come into the black forest--how her mother and father had died of
the same plague more than ten years ago, and how Jed Hawkins and
his woman had promised to keep her for three silver fox skins
which her father had caught before the sickness came. That much
the woman had confided in her, for she was only six when it
happened. And she had not dared to look at Jolly Roger when she
told him of what had passed since then, so she saw little of the
hardening in his face as he listened. But he had blown his nose--