that had gone out of
his life. At the thresholds of the cabins he sniffed; outside of the
tepees he circled close, gathering the wind. The canoes he watched with
eyes in which there was a hopeful gleam. Once he thought the wind
brought him the scent of Nepeese, and all at once his legs grew weak
under his body and his heart seemed to stop beating. It was only for a
moment or two. She came out of the tepee--an Indian girl with her hands
full of willow work--and Baree slunk away unseen.

It was almost December when Lerue, a half-breed from Lac Bain, saw
Baree's footprints in freshly fallen snow, and a little later caught a
flash of him in the bush.

"Mon Dieu, I tell you his feet are as big as my hand, and he is as
black as a raven's wing with the sun on it!" he exclaimed in the
company's store at Lac Bain. "A fox? Non! He is half as big as a bear.
A wolf--oui! And black as the devil, m'sieus."

McTaggart was one of those who heard. He was putting his signature in
ink to a letter he had written to the company when Lerue's words came
to him. His hand stopped so suddenly that a drop of ink spattered on
the letter. Through him there ran a curious shiver as he looked over at
the half-breed. Just then Marie came in. McTaggart had brought her back
from her tribe. Her big, dark eyes had a sick look in them, and some of
her wild beauty had gone since a year ago.

"He was gone like--that!" Lerue was saying, with a snap of his fingers.
He saw Marie, and stopped.

"Black, you say?" McTaggart said carelessly, without lifting his eyes
from his writing. "Did he not bear some dog mark?"

Lerue shrugged his shoulders.

"He was gone like the wind, m'sieu. But he was a wolf."

With scarcely a sound that the others could hear Marie had whispered
into the factor's ear, and folding his letter McTaggart rose quickly
and left the store. He was gone an hour. Lerue and the others were
puzzled. It was not often that Marie came into the store. It was not
often that they saw her at all. She remained hidden in the factor's log
house, and each time that he saw her Lerue thought that her face was a
little thinner than the last, and her eyes bigger and hungrier looking.
In his own heart there was a great yearning.

Many a night he passed the little window beyond which he knew that she
was sleeping. Often he looked to catch a glimpse of her pale face, and
he lived in the one happiness of knowing that Marie understood, and
that into her eyes th