but he shouldered boldly among them and passed out.

'Pack!' was his laconic greeting to Zarinska as he passed her
lodge and hurried to harness his dogs. A few minutes later he
swept into the council at the head of the team, the woman by his
side. He took his place at the upper end of the oblong, by the
side of the chief. To his left, a step to the rear, he stationed
Zarinska, her proper place. Besides, the time was ripe for
mischief, and there was need to guard his back.

On either side, the men crouched to the fire, their voices lifted
in a folk-chant out of the forgotten past. Full of strange,
halting cadences and haunting recurrences, it was not beautiful.
'Fearful' may inadequately express it. At the lower end, under
the eye of the Shaman, danced half a score of women. Stern were
his reproofs of those who did not wholly abandon themselves to
the ecstasy of the rite. Half hidden in their heavy masses of
raven hair, all dishevelled and falling to their waists, they
slowly swayed to and fro, their forms rippling to an
ever-changing rhythm.

It was a weird scene; an anachronism. To the south, the
nineteenth century was reeling off the few years of its last
decade; here flourished man primeval, a shade removed from the
prehistoric cave-dweller, forgotten fragment of the Elder World.
The tawny wolf-dogs sat between their skin-clad masters or fought
for room, the firelight cast backward from their red eyes and
dripping fangs. The woods, in ghostly shroud, slept on unheeding.

The White Silence, for the moment driven to the rimming forest,