She went straight to Bram and before the wolf-man’s eyes held a long, shining tress of hair!

Instantly the mumbling in Bram’s throat ceased and he thrust out slowly a huge misshapen hand toward the golden strand.  Philip felt his nerves stretching to the breaking point.  With Bram the girl’s hair was a fetich.  A look of strange exultation crept over the giant’s heavy features as his fingers clutched the golden offering.  It almost drew a cry of warning from Philip.  He saw the girl smiling in the face of a deadly peril—­a danger of which she was apparently unconscious.  Her hair still fell loose about her in a thick and shimmering glory.  And Bram’s eyes were on it as he took the tress from her fingers!  Was it conceivable that this mad-man did not comprehend his power!  Had the thought not yet burned its way into his thick brain that a treasure many times greater than, that which she had doled out to him lay within the reach of his brute hands at any time he cared to reach out for it?  And was it possible that the girl did not guess her danger as she stood there?

What she could see of his face must have been as pale as her own when she looked at him.  She smiled, and nodded at Bram.  The giant was turning slowly toward the window, and after a moment or two in which they could hear him mumbling softly he sat down cross-legged against the wall, divided the tress into three silken threads and began weaving them into a snare.  The color was returning to Celie’s face when Philip looked at her again.  She told him with a gesture of her head and hands that she was going into her room for a time.  He didn’t blame her.  The excitement had been rather unusual.

After she had gone he dug his shaving outfit out of his kit-bag.  It included a mirror and the reflection he saw in this mirror fairly shocked him.  No wonder the girl had been frightened at his first appearance.  It took him half an hour to shave his face clean, and all that time Bram paid no attention to him but went on steadily at his task of weaving the golden snare.  Celie did not reappear until the wolf-man had finished and was leaving the cabin.  The first thing she noticed was the change in Philip’s face.  He saw the pleasure in her eyes and felt himself blushing.

From the window they watched Bram.  He had called his wolves and was going with them to the gate.  He carried his snowshoes and his long whip.  He went through the gate first and one by one let his beasts out until ten of the twenty had followed him.  The gate was closed then.

Celie turned to the table and Philip saw that she had brought from her room a pencil and a bit of paper.  In a moment she held the paper out to him, a light of triumph in her face.  At last they had found a way to talk.  On the paper was a crude sketch of a caribou head.  It meant that Bram had gone hunting.