, saying that the dog was not
dead, but that his heart was beating steadily and that he thought
the last stiffening blow of the poison was over. To McKay it was like
bringing the dead back to life. He raised his head and drew away his
arms and knelt beside the bunk stunned and mutely hopeful while Boileau
took his place and began dropping warm condensed milk down Peter's
throat. In a little while Peter's eyes opened and he gave a great sigh.

Boileau looked up and shrugged his shoulders.

"That was a good breath, m'sieu," he said. "What is left of the poison
has done its worst. He will live."

A bit stupidly McKay rose to his feet. He swayed a little, and for the
first time sensed the hot tears that had blinded his eyes and wet his
cheeks. And then there came a sobbing laugh out of his throat and he
went to the window of the Frenchman's shack and stared out into the
white world, seeing nothing. He had stood in the presence of death many
times before but never had that presence choked up his heart as in this
hour when the soul of Peter, his comrade, had stood falteringly for a
space half-way between the living and the dead.

When he turned from the window Boileau was covering Peter's body with
blankets and a warm bear skin. And for many days thereafter Peter was
nursed through the slow sickness which followed.

An early spring came this year in the northland. South of the Reindeer
waterway country the snows were disappearing late in March and ice was
rotting the first week in April. Winds came from the south and west and
the sun was warmer and clearer than Boileau had ever known it at the
winter's end in Lost Lake country. It was in this first week of April
that Peter was able to travel, and McKay pointed his trail once more for
Cragg's Ridge.

He left a part of his winter dunnage at Boileau's shack and went on
light, figuring to reach Cragg's Ridge before the new "goose moon" had
worn itself out in the west. But for a week Peter lagged and until the
darker red in the rims of his eyes cleared away Jolly Roger checked the
impetus of his travel so that the goose moon had faded out and the "frog
moon" of May was in its full before they came down the last slope that
dipped from the Height of Land to the forests and lakes of the lower
country.

And now, in these days, it seemed to Jolly Roger that a great kindness,
and not tragedy, had delayed him so that his "home coming" was in
the gladness of spring. All about him