he one you have shut with a club?"

"He deserved it," muttered Thoreau. "He snapped at my hand. But I mean
the other eye, m'sieu--the one that is glaring at us now like a red
bloodstone with the heart of a devil in it! I tell you he is a quarter
wolf...."

"And the broken paw. I suppose that was done by a club, too?"
interrupted David.

"It was broken like that when I traded for him a year ago, m'sieu. I
have not maimed him. And ... yes, you may have the beast! May the saints
preserve you!"

"And his name?"

"The Indian who owned him as a puppy five years ago called him Baree,
which among the Dog Ribs means Wild Blood. He should have been called
The Devil."

Thoreau shrugged his shoulders, as though the matter and its
consequences were now off his hands, and turned in the direction of the
cabin. As he followed the Frenchman, David looked back at Baree. The big
husky had risen from the snow. He was standing at the full length of
his chain, and as David disappeared among the spruce a low whine that
was filled with a strange yearning followed him. He did not hear the
whine, but there came to him distinctly a moment later the dog's racking
cough, and he shivered, and his eyes burned into Thoreau's broad back as
he thought of the fresh blood-clots that were staining the white snow.

CHAPTER VIII

Much to Thoreau's amazement Father Roland made no objection to David's
ownership of Baree, and when the Frenchman described with many
gesticulations of wonder what had happened between that devil-dog and
the man, he was still more puzzled by the look of satisfaction in the
Little Missioner's face. In David there had come the sudden awakening of
something which had for a long time been dormant within him, and Father
Roland saw this change, and felt it, even before David said, when
Thoreau had turned away with a darkly suggestive shrug of his shoulders:

"That poor devil of a beast is down and out, _mon Pere_. I have never
been so bad as that; never. Kill him? Bah! If this magical north country
of yours will make a man out of a human derelict it will surely work
some sort of a transformation in a dog that has been clubbed into
imbecility. Will it not?"

It was not the David of yesterday or the day before that was speaking.
There was a passion in his voice, a deep contempt, a half taunt, a
tremble of anger. There was a flush in his cheeks, too, and a spark of
fire in his eyes. In his heart Father Roland whispered t