Still without speaking, Philip drew a knife from his pocket and cut the shining thread above the second knot, and worked at the finely wrought weaving of the silken filaments until a tress of hair, crinkled and waving, lay on the table before them.  If he had possessed a doubt, it was gone now.  He could not remember where he had ever seen just that colored gold in a woman’s hair.  Probably he had, at one time or another.  It was not red gold.  It possessed no coppery shades and lights as it rippled there in the lamp glow.  It was flaxen, and like spun silk—­so fine that, as he looked at it, he marveled at the patience that had woven it into a snare.  Again he looked at Pierre.  The same question was in their eyes.

“It must be—­that Bram has a woman with him,” said Pierre.

“It must be,” said Philip.  “Or—­”

That final word, its voiceless significance, the inflection which Philip gave to it as he gazed at Pierre, stood for the one tremendous question which, for a space, possessed the mind of each.  Pierre shrugged his shoulders.  He could not answer it.  And as he shrugged his shoulders he shivered, and at a sudden blast of the wind against the cabin door he turned quickly, as though he thought the blow might have been struck by a human hand.

“Diable!” he cried, recovering himself, his white teeth flashing a smile at Philip.  “It has made me nervous—­what I saw there in the light of the campfire, M’sieu.  Bram, and his wolves, and that!”

He nodded at the shimmering strands.

“You have never seen hair the color of this, Pierre?”

“Non.  In all my life—­not once.”

“And yet you have seen white women at Fort Churchill, at York Factory, at Lac la Biche, at Cumberland House, and Norway House, and at Fort Albany?”

“Ah-h-h, and at many other places, M’sieu.  At God’s Lake, at Lac Seul, and over on the Mackenzie—­and never have I seen hair on a woman like that.”

“And Bram has never been out of the northland, never farther south than Fort Chippewyan that we know of,” said Philip.  “It makes one shiver, eh, Pierre?  It makes one think of—­what?  Can’t you answer?  Isn’t it in your mind?”

French and Cree were mixed half and half in Pierre’s blood.  The pupils of his eyes dilated as he met Philip’s steady gaze.

“It makes one think,” he replied uneasily, “of the chasse-galere and the loup-garou, and—­and—­almost makes one believe.  I am not superstitious, M’sieu—­non—­non—­I am not superstitious,” he cried still more uneasily.  “But many strange things are told about Bram and his wolves;—­that he has sold his soul to the devil, and can travel through the air, and that he can change himself into the form of a wolf at will.  There are those who have heard him singing the Chanson de Voyageur to the howling of his wolves away up in the sky.  I have seen them, and talked with them, and over on the McLeod I saw a whole tribe making incantation because they had seen Bram and his wolves building themselves a conjuror’s house in the heart of a thunder-cloud.  So—­is it strange that he should snare rabbits with, a woman’s hair?”