SOMETHING that had been in that face impinged itself upon him
above all other things. Wild and savage as the face had been, he
had seen in it the unutterable pathos of a creature without hope.
In that moment, even as caution held him listening for the
approach of danger, he no longer felt the quickening thrill of man
on the hunt for man. He could not have explained the change in
himself--the swift reaction of thought and emotion that filled him
with a mastering sympathy for Bram Johnson.

He waited, and less and less grew his fear of the wolves. Even
more clearly he saw Bram as the time passed; the hunted look in
the man's eyes, even as he hunted--the loneliness of him as he had
stood listening for a sound from the only friends he had--the
padded beasts ahead. In spite of Bram's shrieking cry to his pack,
and the strangeness of the laugh that had floated back out of the
white night after the shots, Philip was convinced that he was not
mad. He had heard of men whom loneliness had killed. He had known
one--Pelletier, up at Point Fullerton, on the Arctic. He could
repeat by heart the diary Pelletier had left scribbled on his
cabin door. It was worse than madness. To Pelletier death had come
at last as a friend. And Bram had been like that--dead to human
comradeship for years. And yet--

Under it all, in Philip's mind, ran the thought of the woman's
hair. In Pierre Breault's cabin he had not given voice to the
suspicion that had flashed upon him. He had kept it to himself,
and Pierre, afraid to speak because of the horror of it, had
remained as silent as he. The thought oppressed him now. He knew
that human hair retained its life and its gloss indefinitely, and
that Bram might have had the golden snare for years. It was quite