occasionally does not pause to reason
its way, but leaps to an immediate and startling finality, which, by
reason of its very suddenness, is for a space like the shock of a
sudden blow. After that one gasp of amazement Philip made no sound. He
spoke no word to Pierre. In a sudden lull of the wind sweeping over the
cabin the ticking of his watch was like the beating of a tiny drum.
Then, slowly, his eyes rose from the silken thread in his fingers and
met Pierre's. Each knew what the other was thinking. If the hair had
been black. If it had been brown. Even had it been of the coarse red of
the blond Eskimo of the upper Mackenzie! But it was gold--shimmering
gold.

Still without speaking, Philip drew a knife from his pocket and cut the
shining thread above the second knot, and worked at the finely wrought
weaving of the silken filaments until a tress of hair, crinkled and
waving, lay on the table before them. If he had possessed a doubt, it
was gone now. He could not remember where he had ever seen just that
colored gold in a woman's hair. Probably he had, at one time or
another. It was not red gold. It possessed no coppery shades and lights
as it rippled there in the lamp glow. It was flaxen, and like spun
silk--so fine that, as he looked at it, he marveled at the patience
that had woven it into a snare. Again he looked at Pierre. The same
question was in their eyes.

"It must be--that Bram has a woman with him," said Pierre.

"It must be," said Philip. "Or--"

That final word, its voiceless significance, the inflection which
Philip gave to it as he gazed at Pierre, stood for the one tremendous
question which, for a space, possessed the mind of each. Pierre
shrugged his shoulders. He could not answer it. And as he shrugged his
shoulders he shivered, and at a sudden blast of the wind against the
cabin door he turned quickly, as though he thought the blow might have
been struck by a human hand.

"Diable!" he cried, recovering himself, his white teeth flashing a
smile at Philip. "It has made me nervous--what I saw there in the light
of the campfire, M'sieu. Bram, and his wolves, and THAT!"

He nodded at the shimmering strands.

"You have never seen hair the color of this, Pierre?"

"Non. In all my life--not once."

"And yet you have seen white women at Fort Churchill, at York Factory,
at Lac la Biche, at Cumberland House, and Norway House, and at Fort
Albany?"

"Ah-h-h, and at many other places, M'sieu. At God'