Olaf paused to light his pipe.

“And they found the Duke,” he added.  “They escaped with him before they learned of the Revolution, or Armin could have gone home with the rest of the Siberian exiles and claimed his rights.  For a lot of reasons they put him aboard an American whaler, and the whaler missed its plans by getting stuck in the ice for the winter up in Coronation Gulf.  After that they started out with dogs and sledge and guides.  There’s a lot more, but that’s the meat of it, Phil.  I’m going to leave it to you to learn Celie’s language and get the details first-hand from her.  But she’s a right enough princess, old man.  And her Dad’s a duke.  It’s up to you to Americanize ’em.  Eh, what’s that?”

Celie had come from the cabin and was standing at Philip’s side, looking up into his face, and the light which Olaf saw unhidden in her eyes made him laugh softly: 

“And you’ve got the job half done, Phil.  The Duke may go back and raise the devil with the people who put him in cold storage, but Lady Celie is going to like America.  Yessir, she’s going to like it better’n any other place on the face of the earth!”

It was late that afternoon, traveling slowly southward over the trail of the Coppermine, when they heard far behind them the wailing cry of Bram Johnson’s wolves.  The sound came only once, like the swelling surge of a sudden sweep of wind, yet when they camped at the beginning of darkness Philip was confident the madman and his pack were close behind them.  Utter exhaustion blotted out the hours for Celie and himself, while Olaf, buried in two heavy Eskimo coats he had foraged from the field of battle, sat on guard through the night.  Twice in the stillness of his long vigil he heard strange cries.  Once it was the cry of a beast.  The second time it was that of a man.

The second day, with dogs refreshed, they traveled faster, and it was this night that they camped in the edge of timber and built a huge fire.  It was such a fire as illumined the space about them for fifty paces or more, and it was into this light that Bram Johnson stalked, so suddenly and so noiselessly that a sharp little cry sprang from Celie’s lips, and Olaf and Philip and the Duke of Rugni stared in wide-eyed amazement.  In his right hand the wolf-man bore a strange object.  It was an Eskimo coat, tied into the form of a bag, and in the bottom of this improvision was a lump half the size of a water pail.  Bram seemed oblivious of all presence but that of Celie.  His eyes were on her alone as he advanced and with a weird sound in his throat deposited the bundle at her feet.  In another moment he was gone.  The Swede rose slowly from where he was sitting, and speaking casually to Celie, took the wolf-man’s gift up in his hands.  Philip observed the strange look in his face as he turned his back to Celie in the firelight and opened the bag sufficiently to get a look inside.  Then he walked out into the darkness, and a moment later returned without the bundle, and with a laugh apologized to Celie for his action.