out on to the river-bank and tried to
chafe them against a rock, but only succeeded in bruising my flesh.
The sun came out and shone down upon me till my thirst grew agonising.
It seemed to me that at last I had run to the end of my tether. Then a
thought occurred to me; wriggling toward the fire, I found that it
still smouldered. By pushing and scraping with my bound hands and
feet, I managed to get some leaves and twigs together, which soon
sprang into a blaze. I waited until it had died down into a narrow
flame, over which I held my hands till the thongs were charred; then,
with a quick twist of the wrists, which caused my scorched flesh to
flake off in shreds, I wrenched my hands apart. This is all true that
I am telling you; you can see for yourself. Already you must have
noticed those marks." He held out his wrists for Granger's inspection;
they were horribly mutilated.

"And after that, when you got better, did the half-breed leave you
undisturbed or did he come back?"

"I did not see either the half-breed or the old man again until that
early morning when I gazed in through the window at Murder Point . . .
and, do you know, that scar on the old man's face is in the same place
as the wound which I gave the timber-wolf?"

Granger laughed nervously. "And what d'you make of that?"

"I hardly dare to say; but, somehow, that beast seemed to me to be
more than a wolf--it looked like a dead soul."

"A dead what? You've said that once before to-night."

Spurting stared at him, amazed at his agitation. "A dead soul," he
repeated; "a soul which has gone out from a man, and left his body
still alive."

"Do you know what name the Indians have given to that old man?" asked
Granger in an awe-struck voice.

"How should I know? I think you called him Beorn."

"Yes, but his other name is the _Man with the Dead Soul_."

CHAPTER XVI

IN HIDING ON HUSKIES' ISLAND

They stared at one another in silence, striving not to realise the
meaning of those words; yet their meaning was unavoidable.

Both knew the legend of the _loup-garou_, the grim tradition of the
peasants of Quebec which the _coureurs des bois_ have carried with
them into every part of Canada. Often in the Klondike, when seated
round the stove on a winter's night, they had heard it retold by
French-Canadians, in low excited whispers, with swift and frightened
turnings of the head. They had laughed at it in the daylight: yet at
night, when the tale w