XVI. AN ECHO FROM THE ALASKAN MOUNTAINS 273
XVII. THE LAST OF LONELY RANCH 286
XVIII. THE FOREST DEMON PURSUES 306
XIX. THE AVENGER 321
IN CONCLUSION 341

THE HOUND FROM THE NORTH

CHAPTER I

IN THE MOUNTAINS

A pallid sun, low, gleaming just over a rampart of mountain-tops.
Sundogs--heralds of stormy weather--fiercely staring, like sentries,
upon either hand of the mighty sphere of light. Vast glaciers
shimmering jewel-like in the steely light of the semi-Arctic evening.
Black belts of gloomy pinewoods on the lower slopes of the mountains;
the trees snow-burdened, but black with the darkness of night in their
melancholy depths. The earth white; snow to the thickness of many feet
on all. Life none; not a beast of the earth, nor a fowl of the air,
nor the hum of an insect. Solitude. Cold--grey, pitiless cold. Night
is approaching.

The hill ranges which backbone the American continent--the northern
extremity of the Rocky Mountains. The barrier which confronts the
traveller as he journeys from the Yukon Valley to the Alaskan
seaboard. Land where the foot of man but rarely treads. And
mid-winter.

But now, in the dying light of day, a man comes slowly, painfully into
the picture. What an atom in that infinity of awful grandeur. One
little life in all that desert of snow and ice. And what a life. The
poor wretch was swathed in furs; snow-shoes on his feet, and a long
staff lent his drooping figure support. His whole attitude told its
own tale of exhaustion. But a closer inspection, one glance into the
fierce-burning eyes, which glowered from the depths of two cavernous
sockets, would have added a sequel of starvation. The eyes had a
frenzied look in them, the look of a man without hope, but with still
that instinct of life burning in his brain. Every now and again he
raised one mitted hand and pressed it to nose and cheeks. He knew his
face was frozen, but he had no desire to stop to thaw it out. He was
beyond such trifles. His upturned storm-collar had become massed with
icicles about his mouth, and the fur was frozen solidly to his chin
whisker, but he gave the matter no heed.

The man tottered on, still onward with the dogged persistence which
the inborn love of life inspires. He longed to rest, to seat hi