“For God’s sake, Croisset, tell me why—­why—­”

Croisset had found Howland’s pistol and freed his hands, and the engineer stretched them out entreatingly.

“I would give my life for that girl, Croisset.  I told her so back there, and she came to me when I was in the snow and—­” He caught himself, adding to what he had left incomplete.  “There is a mistake, Croisset.  I am not the man they want to kill!”

Croisset was smiling at him again.

“Smoke—­and think, M’seur.  It is impossible for me to tell you why you should be dead—­but you ought to know, unless your memory is shorter than a child’s.”

He went to the dogs, stirring them up with the cracking of his whip, and when Howland turned to look back he saw a bright flare of light where the other sledge had stopped.  A man’s voice came from the farther gloom, calling to Croisset in French.

“He tells me I am to take you on alone,” said Croisset, after he had replied to the words spoken in a patois which Howland could not understand.  “They will join us again very soon.”

“They!” exclaimed Howland.  “How many will it take to kill me, my dear Croisset?” The half-breed smiled down into his face again.

“You may thank the Blessed Virgin that they are with us,” he replied softly.  “If you have any hope outside of Heaven, M’seur, it is on that sledge behind.”

As he went again to the dogs, straightening the leader in his traces, Howland stared back at the firelit space in the forest gloom.  He could see a man adding fuel to the blaze, and beyond him, shrouded in the deep shadows of the trees, an indistinct tangle of dogs and sledge.  As he strained his eyes to discover more there was a movement beyond the figure over the fire and the young engineer’s heart leaped with a sudden thrill.  Croisset’s voice sounded in a shrill shout behind him, and at that warning cry in French the second figure sprang back into the gloom.  But Howland had recognized it, and the chilled blood in his veins leaped into warm life again at the knowledge that it was Meleese who was trailing behind them on the second sledge!  “When you yell like that give me a little warning if you please, Jean,” he said, speaking as coolly as though he had not recognized the figure that had come for an instant into the firelight.  “It is enough to startle the life out of one!”

“It is our way of saying good-by, M’seur,” replied Croisset with a fierce snap of his whip.  “Hoo-la, get along there!” he cried to the dogs, and in half a dozen breaths the fire was lost to view.

Dawn comes at about eight o’clock in the northern mid-winter; beyond the fiftieth degree the first ruddy haze of the sun begins to warm the southeastern skies at nine, and its glow had already risen above the forests before Croisset stopped his team again.  For two hours he had not spoken a word to his prisoner and after several unavailing efforts to break the other’s taciturnity Howland lapsed into a silence of his own.  When he had brought his tired dogs to a halt, Croisset spoke for the first time.