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,