For the second time since coming into the North he felt the blood leaping through his veins as on that first night in Prince Albert when from the mountain he had heard the lone wolf, and when later he had seen the beautiful face through the hotel window.  Howland was one of the few men who possess unbounded confidence in themselves, who place a certain pride in their physical as well as their mental capabilities, and he was confident now.  His successful and indomitable fight over obstacles in a big city had made this confidence a genuine part of his being.  It was a confidence that flushed his face with joyous enthusiasm as he ran after the dogs, and that astonished and puzzled Jean Croisset.

“Mon Dieu, but you are a strange man!” exclaimed the Frenchman when he brought the dogs down to a walk after a half mile run.  “Blessed saints, M’seur, you are laughing—­and I swear it is no laughing matter.”

“Shouldn’t a man be happy when he is going to his wedding, Jean?” puffed Howland, gasping to get back the breath he had lost.

“But not when he’s going to his funeral, M’seur.”

“If I were one of your blessed saints I’d hit you over the head with a thunderbolt, Croisset.  Good Lord, what sort of a heart have you got inside of your jacket, man?  Up there where we’re going is the sweetest little girl in the whole world.  I love her.  She loves me.  Why shouldn’t I be happy, now that I know I’m going to see her again very soon—­and take her back into the South with me?”

“The devil!” grunted Jean.

“Perhaps you’re jealous, Croisset,” suggested Howland.  “Great Scott, I hadn’t thought of that!”

“I’ve got one of my own to love, M’seur; and I wouldn’t trade her for all else in the world.”

“Damned if I can understand you,” swore the engineer.  “You appear to be half human; you say you’re in love, and yet you’d rather risk your life than help out Meleese and me.  What the deuce does it mean?”

“That’s what I’m doing, M’seur—­helping Meleese.  I would have done her a greater service if I had killed you back there on the trail and stripped your body for those things that would be foul enough to eat it.  I have told you a dozen times that it is God’s justice that you die.  And you are going to die—­very soon, M’seur.”

“No, I’m not going to die, Jean.  I’m going to see Meleese, and she’s going back into the South with me.  And if you’re real good you may have the pleasure of driving us back to the Wekusko, Croisset, and you can be my best man at the wedding.  What do you say to that?”

“That you are mad—­or a fool,” retorted Jean, cracking his whip viciously.

The dogs swung sharply from the trail, heading from their southerly course into the northwest.

“We will save a day by doing this,” explained Croisset at the other’s sharp word of inquiry.  “We will hit the other trail twenty miles west of here, while by following back to where they turned we would travel sixty miles to reach the same point.  That one chance in a hundred which you have depends on this, M’seur.  If the other sledge has passed—­”