e to an ear less
keen than his. He crept out of the shelter and looked into the wood.
He could see shadowy forms, stealing among the trees, gliding down the
hill. Five of them. Wolves, doubtless! He must guard the provisions. By
this time the rest of his team were awake. Their eyes glittered. They
stirred uneasily. But they did not move from the dying fire. It was no
concern of theirs what their leader chose to do out of hours. In the
traces they would follow him, but there was no loyalty in their hearts.
Pichou stood alone by the sledge, waiting for the wolves.

But these were no wolves. They were assassins. Like a company of
soldiers, they lined up together and rushed silently down the slope.
Like lightning they leaped upon the solitary dog and struck him down. In
an instant, before Dan Scott could throw off his blanket and seize the
loaded butt of his whip, Pichou's throat and breast were torn to rags,
his life-blood poured upon the snow, and his murderers were slinking
away, slavering and muttering through the forest.

Dan Scott knelt beside his best friend. At a glance he saw that the
injury was fatal. "Well done, Pichou!" he murmured, "you fought a good
fight."

And the dog, by a brave effort, lifted the head with the black patch on
it, for the last time, licked his master', hand, and then dropped back
upon the snow--contented, happy, dead.

There is but one drawback to a dog's friendship. It does not last long
enough.

End of the story? Well, if you care for the other people in it, you
shall hear what became of them. Dan Scott went on to the head of the
lake and found the Indians, and fed them and gave them his medicine, and
all of them got well except two, and they continued to hunt along
the Ste. Marguerite every winter and trade with the Honourable H. B.
Company. Not with Dan Scott, however, for before that year was ended
he resigned his post, and went to Montreal to finish his course in
medicine; and now he is a respected physician in Ontario. Married; three
children; useful; prosperous. But before he left Seven Islands he went
up the Ste. Marguerite in the summer, by canoe, and made a grave for
Pichou's bones, under a blossoming ash tree, among the ferns and wild
flowers. He put a cross over it.

"Being French," said he, "I suppose he was a Catholic. But I'll swear he
was a Christian."

VI. THE WHITE BLOT

I

The real location of a city house depends upon the pictures which hang
up