o afford emergency concealment of a
sort.

They had gone but a short distance into the woods, however, before both
of them stopped abruptly and listened to a strange sound which carried
to them eerily in the quiet night with all the mystery of the
unaccountable. It was like the beat of a distant drum, a hollow tattoo
that came and went at regular intervals:

_Rumma-tumma-tum-tum . . . tum-tum!_
_RUM-tummaty-tum-tum . . . tum-tum!_

"What is that?" said Kendrick in a low voice.

"It's a new one on me," muttered McCorquodale in an awed tone.

"Sounds like an Indian drum. Listen. There it is again."

As they advanced the intermittent drumming increased in volume.
Presently above the trees they could see a glow in the sky. The
reflection of what seemed to be a huge bonfire grew so strong that they
left the logging trail for fear of discovery and stole forward
cautiously through the woods.

_Rappa-tappa-tap-tap . . . tap-tap!_
_RAP-tappety-tap-tap . . . tap-tap!_

A medley of many voices rose in a weird chant which struck across the
night like the wall of some stricken victim of the _loup garou_. It
fell away abruptly and the drumming noise renewed.

Turning sharply to the right to get well away from the tote road,
Kendrick and his companion crept at last to the edge of the clearing
and took refuge in a hollow where a fallen tree hid them completely.
From behind this shelter they peered forth upon a strange scene.

In front of the bunk house, cook shanty, stables, sealer's shanty and
other low log buildings that once had been a lumber-camp, was an open
space, about two acres in extent, lighted up like day by a bonfire at
each end. In the centre, alongside a stump, his figure boldly revealed
by the firelight, stood a man with dishevelled hair and a stubby growth
of black whisker. He wore the corduroys and Strathcona boots of a
shantyman; about his waist was a bright red scarf. Inverted upon the
stump was an empty wooden box and in each hand he flourished an empty
whisky bottle.

Seated upon the ground in a semi-circle were nine of the roughest
looking men Phil ever had seen, each with a piece of broken pine box
across his knees and a whisky bottle or a short stick in either hand.
Some of them were undoubtedly half-breeds, swarthy of skin and very
unkempt; some bore the scars of knife wounds on their faces--riff-raff
of the cities mixed with the off-scourings of railway and lumber camps.
The whol