barrens. They had nearly finished when he came
back from one of these observations, his lips set a little tighter, a
barely perceptible tremor in his voice when he spoke.

"They're coming, Falkner!"

They picked up their revolvers and the doctor buttoned his coat tight up
about his neck.

For ten minutes they sat silent and listening.

Not until the crunching beat of snow-shoes came to their ears did the
doctor move. Thrusting his weapon into his coat pocket, he went to the
door. Falkner followed him, and stood well out of sight when he opened
it. Two men and a dog team were crossing the opening. McGill's dogs were
fastened under a brush lean-to built against the cabin, and as the rival
team of huskies began filling the air with their clamor for a fight,
the stranger team halted and one of the two men came forward alone. He
stopped with some astonishment before the aristocratic-looking little
man waiting for him in Pierre's doorway.

"Is Pierre Thoreau at home?" he demanded.

"I'm a stranger here, so I can not say," replied the doctor, inspecting
the questioner with marked coolness. "It is possible, however, that he
is--for I picked up a man half dead out in the snow last night, and I'm
waiting for him to come back to life. A smooth-faced, blond fellow, with
a cut on his head. It may be this Pierre Thoreau."

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the man kicked off his
snow-shoes and with an excited wave of his arm to his companion with
the dogs, almost ran past the doctor.

"It's him--the man I want to see!" he cried in a low voice. "My name's
Dobson, of the--"

What more he had meant to say was never finished. Falkner's powerful
arms had gripped his head and throat in a vise-like clutch from which
no smother of sound escaped, and three or four minutes later, when the
second man came through the door, he found his comrade flat on his
back, bound and gagged, and the shining muzzles of two short and
murderous-looking revolvers leveled at his breast. He was a swarthy
breed, scarcely larger than the doctor himself, and his only
remonstrance as his hands were fastened behind his back was a brief
outburst of very bad and, very excited French which the professor
stopped with a threatening flourish of his gun.

"You'll do," he said, standing off to survey his prisoner. "I believe
you're harmless enough to have the use of your legs and mouth." With
a comic bow the little doctor added, "M'sieur, I'm going to