e
violin, thin and small and wonderfully penetrating. He could not tell,
at first, what it might be. For it was as unlike the violin as it was
like the bow and the rosined strings. Then he made out, surely, that it
was the whistling of a human being.

It followed no tune, no reasoned theme. The music was beautiful in its
own self. It rose straight up like the sky-lark from the ground, sheer
up against the white light of the sky, and there it sang against
heaven's gate. He had never heard harmony like it. He would never again
hear such music, so thin and yet so full that it went through and
through him, until he felt the strains take a new, imitative life within
him. He would have whistled the strains himself, but he could not follow
them. They escaped him, they soared above him. They followed no law or
rhythm. They flew on wings and left him far below. The girl moved away
from him as if led by an invisible hand, and now she stood at the
extremity of the porch. He followed her.

"Do you hear?" she cried, turning to him.

"What is it?" asked the doctor.

"It is he! Don't you understand?"

"Barry? Yes! But what does the whistling mean; is it for his wolf-dog?"

"I don't know," she answered quickly. "All I understand is that it is
beautiful. Where are your theories and explanations now, Doctor Byrne?".

"It _is_ beautiful--God knows!--but doesn't the wolf-dog understand it
better than either you or I?"

She turned and faced Byrne, standing very close, and when she spoke
there was something in her voice which was like a light. In spite of the
dark he could guess at every varying shade of her expression.

"To the rest of us," she murmured, "Dan has nothing but silence, and
hardly a glance. Buck saved his life to-night, and yet Dan remembered
nothing except the blow which had been struck. And now--now he pours out
all the music in his soul for a dumb beast. Listen!"

He saw her straighten herself and stand taller.

"Then through the wolf--I'll conquer through the dumb beast!"

She whipped past Byrne and disappeared into the house; at the same
instant the whistling, in the midst of a faint, high climax, broke,
shivered, and was ended. There was only the darkness and the silence
around Byrne, and the unsteady wind against his face.

CHAPTER XXV

WERE-WOLF

Doctor Byrne, pacing the front veranda with his thoughtful head bowed,
saw Buck Daniels step out with his quirt dangling in his hand, his
cartridge