made a movement as if to approach the window.  He detained her, and in the same moment there came a fierce and snarling outcry from the wolves in the corral.  Making Celie understand that she was to remain where he almost forcibly placed her near the table, Philip went again to the window.  The pack had gathered close to the gate and two or three of the wolves were leaping excitedly against the sapling bars of their prison.  Between the cabin and the gate a second body lay in the snow.  Philip’s mind leapt to a swift conclusion.  The Eskimos had ambushed Bram, and they believed that only the girl was in the cabin.  Intuitively he guessed how the superstitious little brown men of the north feared the madman’s wolves.  One by one they were picking them off with their javelins from outside the corral.

As he looked a head and pair of shoulders rose suddenly above the top of the sapling barrier, an arm shot out and he caught the swift gleam of a javelin as it buried itself in the thick of the pack.  In a flash the head and shoulders of the javelin-thrower had disappeared, and in that same moment Philip heard a low cry behind him.  Celie had returned to the window.  She had seen what he had seen, and her breath came suddenly in a swift and sobbing excitement.  In amazement he saw that she was no longer pale.  A vivid flush had gathered in each of her cheeks and her eyes blazed with a dark fire.  One of her hands caught his arm and her fingers pinched his flesh.  He stared dumbly for a moment at the strange transformation in her.  He almost believed that she wanted to fight—­that she was ready to rush out shoulder to shoulder with him against their enemies.  Scarcely had the cry fallen from her lips when she turned and ran swiftly into her room.  It seemed to Philip that she was not gone ten seconds.  When she returned she thrust into his hand a revolver.

It was a toy affair.  The weight and size of the weapon told him that before he broke it and looked at the caliber.  It was a “stocking” gun as they called those things in the service, fully loaded with .22 caliber shots and good for a possible partridge at fifteen or twenty paces.  Under other conditions it would have furnished him with considerable amusement.  But the present was not yesterday or the day before.  It was a moment of grim necessity—­ and the tiny weapon gave him the satisfaction of knowing that he was not entirely helpless against the javelins.  It would shoot as far as the stockade, and it might topple a man over if he hit him just right.  Anyway, it would make a noise.

A noise!  The grin that had come into his face died out suddenly as he looked at Celie.  He wondered if to her had come the thought that now flashed upon him—­if it was that thought that had made her place the revolver in his hand.  The blaze of excitement in her wonderful eyes almost told him that it was.  With Bram gone, the Eskimos believed she was alone and at their mercy as soon as the wolves were out of the way.  Two or three shots from the revolver—­ and Philip’s appearance in the corral—­would shake their confidence.  It would at least warn them that Celie was not alone, and that her protector was armed.  For that reason Philip thanked the Lord that a “stocking” gun had a bark like the explosion of a toy cannon even if its bite was like that of an insect.