blackened face of a huge rock, finishing the snare which had taken
him an hour to weave. For a long time he had been conscious of the
curious, hissing monotone of the Aurora, the "music of the skies,"
reaching out through the space of the earth with a purring sound
that was at times like the purr of a cat and at others like the
faint hum of a bee. Absorbed in his work he did not, for a time,
hear the other sound. Not until he had finished, and was placing
the golden snare in his wallet, did the one sound individualize
and separate itself from the other.

He straightened himself suddenly, and listened. Then he jumped to
his feet and ran through fifty feet of low scrub to the edge of
the white plain.

It was coming from off there, a great distance away. Perhaps a
mile. It might be two. The howling of wolves!

It was not a new or unusual sound to him. He had listened to it
many times during the last two years. But never had it thrilled
him as it did now, and he felt the blood leap in sudden swiftness
through his body as the sound bore straight in his direction. In a
flash he remembered all that Pierre Breault had said. Bram and his
pack hunted like that. And it was Bram who was coming. He knew it.

He ran back to his tent and in what remained of the heat of the
fire he warmed for a few moments the breech of his rifle. Then he
smothered the fire by kicking snow over it. Returning to the edge
of the plain, he posted himself near the largest spruce he could
find, up which it would be possible for him to climb a dozen feet
or so if necessity drove him to it. And this necessity bore down