From his canoe Croisset broke the silence.

“The wind has given the pack our scent, ma Josephine, and they are coming to meet you,” he said.

The girl made no reply, but Philip could see now that she was sitting tense and erect.  As suddenly as it had begun the cry of the pack ceased.  The dogs had reached the water, and were waiting.  Not until Jean swung his canoe toward shore and the bow of it scraped on a gravelly bar did they give voice again, and then so close and fiercely that involuntarily Philip held his canoe back.  In another moment Josephine had stepped lightly over the side in a foot of water.  He could not see what happened then, except that the bar was filled with a shadowy horde of leaping, crowding, yelping beasts, and that Josephine was the centre of them.  He heard her voice clear and commanding, crying out their names—­ Tyr, Captain, Bruno, Thor, Wamba—­until their number seemed without end; he heard the metallic snap of fangs, quick, panting breaths, the shuffling of padded feet; and then the girl’s voice grew more clear, and the sounds less, until he heard nothing but the bated breath of the pack and a low, smothered whine.

In that moment the wind-blown clouds above them broke in a narrow rift across the skies, and for an instant the moon shone through.  What he saw then drew Philip’s breath from him in a wondering gasp.

On the white bar stood Josephine.  The wind on the lake had torn the strands of her long braid loose and her hair swept in a damp and clinging mass to her hips.  She was looking toward him, as if about to speak.  But it was the pack that made him stare.  A sea of great shaggy heads and crouching bodies surrounded her, a fierce yellow and green-eyed horde flattened like a single beast upon their bellies their heads turned toward her, their throats swelling and their eyes gleaming in the joyous excitement of her return.  An instant of that strange and thrilling picture, and the night was black again.  The girl’s voice spoke softly.  Bodies shuffled out of her path.  And then she said, quite near to him;

“Are you coming, Philip?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Not without a slight twinge of trepidation did Philip step from his canoe to her.  He had not heard Croisset go ashore, and for a moment he felt as if he were deliberately placing himself at the mercy of a wolf-pack.  Josephine may have guessed the effect of the savage spectacle he had beheld from the canoe, for she was close to the water’s edge to meet him.  She spoke, and in the pitch darkness he reached out.  Her hand was groping for him, and her fingers closed firmly about his own.

“They are my bodyguard, and I have trained them all from puppies,” she explained.  “They don’t like strangers, but will fight for anything that I touch.  So I will lead you.”  She turned with him toward the pack, and cried in her clear, commanding voice:  “Marche, boys!—­Tyr, Captain, Thor, Marche!  Hoosh, hoosh, Marche!”