e still, deep forests had long ago brought her dreams of
this man. And these same forests seemed to whisper to Philip that her
beauty was a part of her soul, and that it was not to be desecrated in
such moments of desire as he was fighting back in himself now.

Suddenly she ran a little ahead of him, and then stopped. A moment
later he stood at her side. They were peering into what looked like a
great, dimly lighted and carpeted hall. For the space of a hundred feet
in diameter the spruce had been thinned out. The trees that remained
were lopped of their lower branches, leaving their upper parts crowding
in a dense shelter that shut out cold and storm. No snow had filtered
through their tops, and on the ground lay cedar and balsam needles two
inches deep, a brown and velvety carpet that shone with the deep lustre
of a Persian rug.

The place was filled with moving shapes and with gleaming eyes that
were half fire in the gloom. Here were leashed the forty fierce and
wolfish beasts of the pack. The dogs had ceased their loud clamour, and
at sight of Josephine and sound of her voice, as she cried out greeting
to them, there ran through the whole space a whining and a clinking of
chains, and with that a snapping of jaws that sent a momentary shiver
up Philip's back.

Josephine took him by the hand now. With him she ran in among them,
calling out their names, laughing with them, caressing the shaggy heads
that were thrust against her--until it seemed to Philip that every
beast in the pit was straining at the end of his chain to get at them
and rend them into pieces. And yet, above this thought, the nervousness
that he could not fight it out of himself, rose the wonder of it all.

Philip had seen a husky snap off a man's hand at a single lunge; he
knew it was a creature of the whip and the club, with the hatred of men
inborn in it from the wolf. What he looked on now filled him with a
sort of awe--and a fear for Josephine. He gave a warning cry and half
drew his pistol when she dropped on her knees and flung her arms about
the shaggy head of a huge beast that could have torn the life from her
in an instant. She looked up at him, laughing, the inch-long fangs of
Captain, the lead-dog, gleaming in brute happiness close to her soft,
flushed face.

"Don't be afraid, Philip!" she cried. "They are my pets--all of them.
This is Captain, who leads my sledge team. Isn't he magnificent?"

"Good God!" breathed Philip, looking abou