fixed on him like a round ball of fire. The lids had closed over his
other eye; they were swollen; there was a big lump just over where the
eye should have been. Then he saw that the beast's lips were cut and
bleeding. There was blood on the snow; and suddenly the big brute
covered his fangs to give a racking cough, as though he had swallowed a
sharp fish-bone, and fresh blood dripped out of his mouth on the snow
between his forepaws. One of these forepaws was twisted; it had been
broken.

"You poor devil!" said David aloud.

He sat down on a birch log within six feet of the end of the chain, and
looked steadily into the big husky's one bloodshot eye as he said
again:

"You poor devil!"

Baree, the dog, did not understand. It puzzled him that this man did not
carry a club. He was used to clubs. So far back as he could remember the
club had been the one dominant thing in his life. It was a club that had
closed his eye. It was a club that had broken one of his teeth and cut
his lips, and it was a club that had beat against his ribs
until--now--the blood came up into his throat and choked him, and
dripped out of his mouth. But this man had no club, and he looked
friendly.

"You poor devil!" said David for the third time.

Then he added, dark indignation in his voice:

"What, in God's name, has Thoreau been doing to you?"

There was something sickening in the spectacle--that battered, bleeding,
broken creature huddling there against the tree, coughing up the red
stuff that discoloured the snow. Loving dogs, he was not afraid of them,
and forgetting Father Roland's warning he rose from the log and went
nearer. From where he stood, looking down, Baree could have reached his
throat. But he made no movement, unless it was that his thickly haired
body was trembling a little. His one red eye looked steadily up at
David.

For the fourth time David spoke;

"You poor, God-forsaken brute!"

There was friendliness, compassion, wonderment in his voice, and he held
down a hand that he had drawn from one of the thick mittens. Another
moment and he would have bent over, but a cry stopped him so sharply and
suddenly that he jumped back.

Thoreau stood within ten feet of him, horrified. He clutched a rifle in
one hand.

"Back--back, m'sieu!" he cried sharply. "For the love of God, jump
back."

He swung his rifle into the crook of his arm. David did not move, and
from Thoreau he looked down coolly at the dog. Baree was a