wolves huddled. It was then that I
came to my reason. I could see him fondling them. I could see their
gleaming fangs. Yes, I could HEAR their bodies, and he was talking to
them and laughing with them through his great beard--and I turned and
fled back to the cabin, running so swiftly that even the wolves would
have had trouble in catching me. And that--that--WAS NOT ALL!"

Again his fingers were clenching and unclenching as he stared at Raine.

"You believe me, M'sieu?"

Philip nodded.

"It seems impossible. And yet--you could not have been dreaming,
Pierre."

Breault drew a deep breath of satisfaction, and half rose to his feet.

"And you will believe me if I tell you the rest?"

"Yes."

Swiftly Pierre went to his bunk and returned with the caribou skin
pouch in which he carried his flint and steel and fire material for the
trail.

"The next day I went back, M'sieu," he said, seating himself again
opposite Philip. "Bram and his wolves were gone. He had slept in a
shelter of spruce boughs. And--and--par les mille cornes du diable if
he had even brushed the snow out! His great moccasin tracks were all
about among the tracks of the wolves, and they were big as the spoor of
a monster bear. I searched everywhere for something that he might have
left, and I found--at last--a rabbit snare."

Pierre Breault's eyes, and not his words--and the curious twisting and
interlocking of his long slim fingers about the caribou-skin bag in his
hand stirred Philip with the thrill of a tense and mysterious
anticipation, and as he waited, uttering no word, Pierre's fingers
opened the sack, and he said:

"A rabbit snare, M'sieu, which had dropped from his pocket into the
snow--"

In another moment he had given it into Philip's hands. The oil lamp was
hung straight above them. Its light flooded the table between them, and
from Philip's lips, as he stared at the snare, there broke a gasp of
amazement. Pierre had expected that cry. He had at first been
disbelieved; now his face burned with triumph. It seemed, for a space,
as if Philip had ceased breathing. He stared--stared--while the light
from above him scintillated on the thing he held. It was a snare. There
could be no doubt of that. It was almost a yard in length, with the
curious Chippewyan loop at one end and the double-knot at the other.

The amazing thing about it was that it was made of a woman's golden
hair.

CHAPTER III

The process of mental induction