In spite of himself he felt creeping slowly over him a shuddering fear that he had not acknowledged before.  The darkness deepening as the fire died away, the stillness of the night, the low wailing of a wind growing out of the north roused in him the unrest and doubt that sunshine and day had dispelled.  An uneasy slumber came at last with this disquiet.  His mind was filled with fitful dreams.  Again he was back with Radisson and MacTavish, listening to the foxes out on the barrens.  He heard the Scotchman’s moaning madness and listened to the blast of storm.  And then he heard a cry—­a cry like that which MacTavish fancied he had heard in the wind an hour before he died.  It was this dream-cry that roused him.

He sat up, and his face and hands were damp.  It was black in the tent.  Outside even the bit of wind had died away.  He reached out a hand, groping for Jean.  The half-breed’s blankets had not been disturbed.  Then for a few moments he sat very still, listening, and wondering if the cry had been real.  As he sat tense and still in the half daze of the sleep it came again.  It was the shrill laughing carnival of a loon out on the lake.  More than once he had laughed at comrades who had shivered at that sound and cowered until its echoes had died away in moaning wails.  He understood now.  He knew why the Indians called it moakwa—­“the mad thing.”  He thought of MacTavish, and threw the blanket from his shoulders, and crawled out of the tent.

Only a few faintly glowing embers remained where he had piled the birch logs.  The sky was full of stars.  The moon, still full and red, hung low in the west.  The lake lay in a silvery and unruffled shimmer.  Through the silence there came to him from a great distance the coughing challenge of a bull moose inviting a rival to battle.  Then Philip saw a dark object huddled close to Josephine’s tent.

He moved toward it, his moccasined feet making no sound.  Something impelled him to keep as quiet as the night itself.  And when he came near—­he was glad.  For the object was Jean.  He sat with his back to a block of birch twenty paces from the door of Josephine’s tent.  His head had fallen forward on his chest.  He was asleep, but across his knees lay his rifle, gripped tightly in both hands.  Quick as a flash the truth rushed upon Philip.  Like a faithful dog Jean was guarding the girl.  He had kept awake as long as he could, but even in slumber his hands did not give up their hold on the rifle.

Against whom was he guarding her?  What danger could there be in this quiet, starlit night for Josephine?  A sudden chill ran through Philip.  Did Jean mistrust him?  Was it possible that Josephine had secretly expressed a fear which made the Frenchman watch over her while she slept?  As silently as he had approached he moved away until he stood in the sand at the shore of the lake.  There he looked back.  He could just see Jean, a dark blot; and all at once the unfairness of his suspicion came upon him.  To him Josephine had given proofs of her faith which nothing could destroy.  And he understood now the reason for that tired, drawn look in Jean’s face.  This was not the first night he had watched.  Every night he had guarded her until, in the small hours of dawn, his eyes had closed heavily as they were closed now.