“Oh, ze sweet Ange, M’sieur!  She cam jus’ in time.”

Josephine was bending over little Marie’s cot when they followed her and the girl mother into the cabin.  In a moment she looked up with a glad smile.

“It is the same sickness, Marie,” she said to the mother.  “I have medicine here that will cure it.  The fever isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

Noon saw a big change in the cabin.  Little Marie’s temperature was falling rapidly.  Breuil and his wife were happy.  After dinner Josephine explained again how they were to give the medicine she was leaving, and at two o’clock they left on their return journey to Adare House.  The sun had disappeared hours before.  Gray banks of cloud filled the sky, and it had grown much colder.

“We will reach home only a little before dark,” said Philip.  “You had better ride, Josephine.”

He was eager to reach Adare House.  By this time he felt that Jean should have returned, and he was confident that there were others of the forest people besides Pierre, Renault, and the Indian in the forest near the pit.  For an hour he kept up a swift pace.  Later they came to a dense cover of black spruce two miles from Adare House.  They had traversed a part of this when the dogs stopped.  Directly ahead of them had fallen a dead cedar, barring the trail.  Philip went to the toboggan for the trail axe.

“I haven’t noticed any wind, have you?” he asked.  “Not enough to topple over a cedar.”

He went to the tree and began cutting.  Scarcely had his axe fallen half a dozen times when a scream of terror turned him about like a flash.  He had only time to see that Josephine had left the sledge, and was struggling in the arms of a man.  In that same instant two others had leaped upon him.  He had not time to strike, to lift his axe.  He went down, a pair of hands gripping at his throat.  He saw a face over him, and he knew now that it was the face of the man he had seen in the firelight, the face of Lang, the Free Trader.  Every atom of strength in him rose in a superhuman effort to throw off his assailants.  Then came the blow.  He saw the club over him, a short, thick club, in the hand of Thoreau himself.  After that followed darkness and oblivion, punctuated by the crack, crack, crack of a revolver and the howling of dogs—­sounds that grew fainter and fainter until they died away altogether, and he sank into the stillness of night.

It was almost dark when consciousness stirred Philip again.  With an effort he pulled himself to his knees, and stared about him.  Josephine was gone, the dogs were gone.  He staggered to his feet, a moaning cry on his lips.  He saw the sledge.  Still in the traces lay the bodies of two of the dogs, and he knew what the pistol shots had meant.  The others had been cut loose; straight out into the forest led the trails of several men; and the meaning of it all, the reality of what had happened, surged upon him in all its horror.  Lang and his cutthroats had carried off Josephine.  He knew by the thickening darkness that they had time to get a good start on their way to Thoreau’s.