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ingly as the low whine gathered in his throat again. His world no longer lay beyond that window. The Woman and the baby had obliterated in him all desire but to be with them. In the cabin Nanette was thinking of him--and of Durant. The man's words came to her again, vividly, significantly: "YOU WILL NOT WANT THE DOG." Yes, all the forest people would say that same thing--even LE FACTEUR himself, when he heard. SHE WOULD NOT WANT THE DOG! And why not? Because he had killed Jacques Le Beau, her husband, in defence of her? Because he had freed her from the bondage of The Brute? Because God had sent him to the end of his chain in that terrible moment that the baby Nanette might live, as the OTHER had not, and that she might grow up with laughter on her lips instead of sobs? In her there rose suddenly a thought that fanned the new flame in her heart. It MUST have been LE BON DIEU! Others might doubt, but she--never. She recalled all that Le Beau had told her about the wild dog--how for many days he had robbed the traps, and the terrific fight he had made when at last he was caught. And of all that The Brute had said there stood out most the words he had spoken one day. "He is a devil, but he was not born of wolf. NON, some time, a long time ago, he was a white man's dog." A WHITE MAN'S DOG! Her soul thrilled. Once--a long time ago--he had known a master with a white heart, just as she had known a girlhood in which the flowers bloomed and the birds sang. She tried to look back, but she could not see very far. She could not vision that day, less than a year ago, when Miki, an angular pup, came down out of the Farther North with Challoner; she could not vision the strange comradeship between the pup and Neewa, the little black bear cub, nor that tragic day when they had fallen out of Challoner's canoe into the swift stream that had carried them over the waterfall and into the Great Adventure which had turned Neewa into a grown bear and Miki into a wild dog. But in her heart she FELT the things which she could not see. Miki had not come by chance. Something greater than that had sent him. She rose quietly, so that she would not waken the baby in the crib, and opened the door. The moon was just rising over the forest and through the glow of it she went to the cage. She heard the dog's joyous whine, and then she felt the warm caress of his tongue upon her bare hands as she thrust them between the sapling bars. "NON,
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