d.

"Great, true, fighting beasts," whispered Josephine under her breath.
"How I would hate almost--"

She had suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair.

"What?" asked Philip.

"To hear men sing like women," she finished.

As swiftly as he had come up Jean and his canoe had sped on ahead of
them.

"You should have heard us sing that up in our snow hut, when for five
months the sun never sent a streak above the horizon," said Philip. "At
the end--in the fourth month--it was more like the wailing of madmen.
MacTavish died then: a young half Scot, of the Royal Mounted. After
that Radisson and I were alone, and sometimes we used to see how loud
we could shout it, and always, when we came to those two last lines--"

She interrupted him:

"Where the gray geese race 'cross the red moon's face
From the white wind's Arctic wrath."

"Your memory is splendid!" he cried admiringly.

"Yes, always when we came to the end of those lines, the white foxes
would answer us from out on the barrens, and we would wait for the
sneaking yelping of them before we went on. They haunted us like little
demons, those foxes, and never once could we catch a glimpse of them
during the long night. They helped to drive MacTavish mad. He died
begging us to keep them away from him. One day I was wakened by
Radisson crying like a baby, and when I sat up in my ice bunk he caught
me by the shoulders and told me that he had seen something that looked
like the glow of a fire thousands and thousands of miles away. It was
the sun, and it came just in time."

"And this other man you speak of, Radisson?" she asked.

"He died two hundred miles back," replied Philip quietly. "But that is
unpleasant to speak of. Look ahead. Isn't that ridge of the forest
glorious in the sunlight?"

She did not take her eyes from his face.

"Do you know, I think there is something wonderful about you," she
said, so gently and frankly that the blood rushed to his cheeks. "Some
day I want to learn those words that helped to keep you alive up there.
I want to know all of the story, because I think I can understand.
There was more to it--something after the foxes yelped back at you?"

"This," he said, and ahead of them Jean Croisset rested on his paddle
to listen to Philip's voice:

"My seams gape wide, and I'm tossed aside
To rot on a lonely shore,
While the leaves and mould like a shroud enfold,
For the last of my trails are o'er;