otone, like the breaking of
surf on a distant shore. With the wind came a thin snow, and the
darkness gathered so that beyond the rim of fire-light there was a
black chaos in which the form of all things was lost. It was not a
night for talk. It was filled with the whisperings of storm, and to
Philip those whisperings were an oppressive presage of the tragedy that
lay that night ahead of them. The dogs were harnessed, five that Jean
had chosen from the pack; and straight out into the pit of gloom the
half-breed led them. In that darkness Philip could see nothing. But not
once did Jean falter, and the dogs followed him, occasionally whining
at the strangeness and unrest of the night; and close behind them came
Philip. For a long time there was no sound but the tread of their feet,
the scraping of the toboggan, the patter of the dogs, and the wind that
bit down from out of the thick sky into the spruce tops. They had
travelled an hour when they came to a place where the smothering weight
of the darkness seemed to rise from about them. It was the edge of a
great open, a bit of the Barren that reached down like a solitary
finger from the North: treeless, shrubless, the playground of the foxes
and the storm winds. Here Jean fell back beside Philip for a moment.

"You are not tiring, M'sieur?"

"I am getting stronger every mile," declared Philip. "I feel no effects
of the blow now, Jean. How far did you say it was to the place where
our people are to meet?"

"Eight miles. We have come four. In this darkness we could make it
faster without the dogs, but they are carrying a hundred pounds of
tepee, guns, and food."

He urged the dogs on in the open space. Another hour and they had come
again to the edge of forest. Here they rested.

"There will be some there ahead of us," said Jean. "Renault and the
other runners will have had more than four hours. They will have
visited a dozen cabins on the trap-lines. Pierre reached old Kaskisoon
and his Swamp Crees in two hours. They love Josephine next to their
Manitou. The Indians will be there to a man!"

Philip did not reply. But his heart beat like a drum at the sureness
and triumph that thrilled in the half-breed's voice. As they went on,
he lost account of time in the flashing pictures that came to him of
the other actors in this night's drama; of those half-dozen Paul
Reveres of the wilderness speeding like shadows through the mystery of
the night, of the thin-waisted, brown-