g grip of something at his heart. In the ghostly light
of the alcohol lamp his eyes were wide open and staring.

He looked at Peter. The dog stood stiff-legged before the hole. His
body was trembling.

"Peter!"

With a responsive wag of his tail Peter turned his bristling face up to
his master. Many times Jolly Roger had seen that unfailing warning in
his comrade's eyes. _There was some one outside_--or Peter's brain, like
his own, was twisted and fooled by the storm!

Against his reasoning--in the face of the absurdity of it--Jolly Roger
was urged into action. He changed the snowshoe and replaced the alcohol
lamp so that the glow of light could be seen more clearly from the
Barren. Then he went to the hole and crawled through. Peter followed
him.

As if infuriated by their audacity, the storm lashed itself over the
top of the dune. They could hear the hissing whine of fine hard snow
tearing above their heads like volleys of shot, and the force of the
wind reached them even in their shelter, bringing with it the flinty
sting of the snow-dust. Beyond them the black barren was filled with a
dismal moaning. Looking up, and yet seeing nothing in the darkness,
Peter understood where the weird shriekings and ghostly cries came
from. It was the wind whipping itself up the side and over the top of
the dune.

Jolly Roger listened, hearing only the convulsive sweep of that mighty
force over a thousand miles of barren. And then came again one of those
brief intervals when the storm seemed to rest for a moment, and its
moaning grew less and less, until it was like the sound of giant
chariot wheels receding swiftly over the face of the earth. Then came
the silence--a few seconds of it--while in the north gathered swiftly
the whispering rumble of a still greater force.

And in this silence came once more a cry--a cry which Jolly Roger McKay
could no longer disbelieve, and close upon the cry the report of a
rifle. Again he could have sworn the voice was a woman's voice. As
nearly as he could judge it came from dead ahead, out of the chaos of
blackness, and in that direction he shouted an answer. Then he ran out
into the darkness, followed by Peter. Another avalanche of wind
gathered at their heels, driving them on like the crest of a flood. In
the first force of it Jolly Roger stumbled and fell to his knees, and
in that moment he saw very faintly the glow of his light at the opening
in the snow dune. A realization of his dead