, meanwhile, keeping
himself from all human eyes, was becoming more and more each day like
the wolves who were his brothers. But the white blood in a man dies
hard, and always there flickered in the heart of Bram's huge chest a
great yearning. It must at times have been worse than death--that
yearning to hear a human voice, to have a human creature to speak to,
though never had he loved man or woman. Which brings us at last to the
final tremendous climax in Bram's life--to the girl, and the other man.

CHAPTER II

The other man was Raine--Philip Raine.

To-night he sat in Pierre Breault's cabin, with Pierre at the opposite
side of the table between them, and the cabin's sheet iron stove
blazing red just beyond. It was a terrible night outside. Pierre, the
fox hunter, had built his shack at the end of a long slim forefinger of
scrub spruce that reached out into the Barren, and to-night the wind
was wailing and moaning over the open spaces in a way that made Raine
shiver. Close to the east was Hudson's Bay--so close that a few moments
before when Raine had opened the cabin door there came to him the low,
never-ceasing thunder of the under-currents fighting their way down
through the Roes Welcome from the Arctic Ocean, broken now and then by
a growling roar as the giant forces sent a crack, like a great knife,
through one of the frozen mountains. Westward from Pierre's cabin there
stretched the lifeless Barren, illimitable and void, without rock or
bush, and overhung at day by a sky that always made Raine think of a
terrible picture he had once seen of Dore's "Inferno"--a low, thick
sky, like purple and blue granite, always threatening to pitch itself
down in terrific avalanches. And at night, when the white foxes yapped,
and the wind moaned--

"As I have hope of paradise I swear that I saw him--alive, M'sieu,"
Pierre was saying again over the table.

Raine, of the Fort Churchill patrol of the Royal Northwest Mounted
Police, no longer smiled in disbelief. He knew that Pierre Breault was
a brave man, or he would not have perched himself alone out in the
heart of the Barren to catch the white foxes; and he was not
superstitious, like most of his kind, or the sobbing cries and strife
of the everlasting night-winds would have driven him away.

"I swear it!" repeated Pierre.

Something that was almost eagerness was burning now in Philip's face.
He leaned over the table, his hands gripping tightly. He was
thirty