ake us north. And I want to warn you, don't put yourself in
reach of them until they get acquainted with you. They're not pets, you
know; I guess they'd appreciate petting just about as much as they would
boiled fish, or poison. There's nothing on earth like a husky or an
Eskimo dog when it comes to lookin' you in the eye with a friendly and
lovable look and snapping your hand off at the same time. But you'll
like 'em, David. You can't help feeling they're pretty good comrades
when you see what they do in the traces."

Thoreau had shouldered the second gunny sack and now led the way into
the thicker spruce and balsam behind the cabin. David and Father Roland
followed, the latter explaining more fully why it was necessary to keep
the sledge dogs "hard as rocks," and how the trick was done. He was
still talking, with the fingers of one hand closed about the little
plush box in his pocket, when they came to the first of the fox pens. He
was watching David closely, a little anxiously--thrilled by the touch of
that box. He read men as he read books, seeing much that was not in
print, and feeling by a wonderful intuitive power emotions not visible
in a face, and he believed that in David there were strange and
conflicting forces struggling now for mastery. It was not in the
surrender of the box that he had felt David's triumph, but in the
voluntary sacrifice of what that box contained. He wanted to rid himself
of the picture, and quickly. He was filled with apprehension lest David
should weaken again, and ask for its return. The locket meant nothing.
It was a bauble--cold, emotionless, easily forgotten; but the other--the
picture of the woman who had almost destroyed him--was a deadly menace,
a poison to David's soul and body as long as it remained in his
possession, and the Little Missioner's fingers itched to tear it from
the velvet casket and destroy it.

He watched his opportunity. As Thoreau tossed three fish over the high
wire netting of the first pen the Frenchman was explaining to David why
there were two female foxes and one male in each of his nine pens, and
why warm houses partly covered with earth were necessary for their
comfort and health, while the sledge dogs required nothing more than a
bed of snow. Father Roland seized this opportunity to drop back toward
the cabin, calling in Cree to Mukoki. Five seconds after the cabin
concealed him from David he had the plush box out of his pocket; another
five and he ha