And beside her
knelt the old gray Missioner, man of God in the deep forest, who
stroked her hair with his thin hand, whispering courage and
consolation to her, with the wind and rain beating overhead and
the windows rattling to the accompaniment of ghostly voices that
shrieked and wailed in the tree-tops outside.
Peter trembled at the sobbing, but his heart and his desire were
with the man who had gone. In his unreasoning little soul it was
Jed Hawkins who was rattling the windows with his unseen hands and
who was pounding at the door with the wind, and who was filling
the black night with its menace and fear. He hated this man, who
lay back in the trail with his lifeless face turned up to the
deluge that poured out of the sky. And he was afraid of the man,
even as he hated him, and he believed that Nada was afraid of him,
and that because of her fear she was crying there in the middle of
the floor, with Father John patting her shoulder and stroking her
hair, and saying things to her which he could not understand. He
wanted to go to her. He wanted to feel himself close against her,
as Nada had held him so often in those hours when she had
unburdened her grief and her unhappiness to him. But even stronger
than this desire was the one to follow his master.
He went to the door, and thrust his nose against the crack at the
bottom of it.
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