f the pines. There, in a little open
place, clustered together upon the ground, were the bodies of our dogs.
All were dead, and the soft forms were frozen into the snow, which the
poor creatures had licked in their agony, so that their open jaws were
stuffed with icicles.

Jacqueline sank down upon the ground and sobbed as though her heart
would break. I stood there watching, my brain paralyzed by the shock
of the discovery.

Then I went back to the sleigh, on the rear of which the frozen fish
was piled. I noticed that it had a faint, slightly aromatic odor. I
flung the hard masses aside and scooped up a powdery substance with my
hands.

Mycology had been a hobby of mine, and it was easy to recognize what
that substance was.

It was the _amanita_, the deadliest and the most widely distributed of
the fungi, and the direst of all vegetable poisons to man and beast
alike. The alkaloid which it contains takes effect only some hours
after its ingestion, when it has entered the blood-streams and begun
its disintegrating action upon the red corpuscles. The dogs must have
partaken of it on the preceding afternoon.

Jacqueline joined me. The tears were streaming down her cheeks; she
slipped her arm through mine and looked mutely at me.

I knew this was Leroux's work. He had tricked me again. I had seen
clusters of the frozen fungus outside St. Boniface. I suppose that,
when winter comes suddenly, such growths remain standing till spring
thaws and rots them, retaining in the meanwhile all their noxious
qualities.

It would have been an easy matter for one of Leroux's agents to have
cast a few handfuls of the deadly powder over the fish while the sleigh
stood waiting outside Danton's door, and the jolting of the vehicle
would have shaken the substance down into the middle of the heap, so
that it would be three or four days before the dogs got to the poisoned
fish.

I was mad with anger. The white landscape seemed to swim before my
eyes. I meant to kill the man now, and without mercy. I would be as
unscrupulous as he. He would be in this place by the afternoon; I
would wait for him outside the trail. My pistols----

Jacqueline was looking up into my face in terror. The sight of her
recalled me to my senses. Leroux afterward--first my duty to her!

"Paul! What is the matter, Paul?" she cried. "I never saw you look
like that before."

I calmed myself and led her away, and presently we were standing b