e turned suddenly to confront
Bram. He would not have known then that the wolf-man was mad, and
impulsively he reached out a hand.

"Bram, she's starving," he cried. "I know now why you wanted that
stuff! But why didn't you tell me! Why don't you talk, and let me know
who she is, and why she is here, and what you want me to do?"

He waited, and Bram stared at him without a sound.

"I tell you I'm a friend," he went on. "I--"

He got no farther than that, for suddenly the cabin was filled with the
madness of Bram's laugh. It was more terrible than out on the open
Barren, or in the forest, and he felt the shudder of the girl at his
side. Her face was close to his shoulder, and looking down he saw that
it was white as death, but that even then she was trying to smile at
Bram. And Bram continued to laugh--and as he laughed, his eyes blazing
a greenish fire, he turned to the stove and began putting fuel into the
fire. It was horrible. Bram's laugh--the girl's dead white face, AND
HER SMILE! He no longer asked himself who she was, and why she was
there. He was overwhelmed by the one appalling fact that she WAS here,
and that the stricken soul crying out to him from the depths of those
eyes that were like wonderful blue amethysts told him that Bram had
made her pay the price. His muscles hardened as he looked at the huge
form bending over the stove. It was a splendid opportunity. A single
leap and he would be at the outlaw's throat. With that advantage, in
open combat, the struggle would at least be equal.

The girl must have guessed what was in his mind, for suddenly her
fingers were clutching at his arm and she was pulling him away from the
wolf-man, speaking to him in the language which he could not
understand. And then Bram turned from the stove, picked up a pail, and
without looking at them left the cabin. They could hear his laugh as he
joined the wolves.

Again Philip's conclusions toppled down about him like a thing made of
blocks. During the next few moments he knew that the girl was telling
him that Bram had not harmed her. She seemed almost hysterically
anxious to make him understand this, and at last, seizing him by the
hand, she drew him into the room beyond the curtained door. Her meaning
was quite as plain as words. She was showing him what Bram had done for
her. He had made her this separate room by running a partition across
the cabin, and in addition to this he had built a small lean-to outside
the mai