Another moment and Philip was outside.  It had stopped snowing, and the clouds were drifting away from under the moon.  Crouched low, his pistol level at his side, he ran swiftly in the direction from which the shot must have come.  The moon revealed the dark edge of the forest a hundred yards away, and he was sure that his attempted murderer had stood somewhere between Adare House and the timber when he fired.  He was not afraid of a second shot.  Even caution was lost in his mad desire to catch Jean red-handed and choke a confession of several things from his lips.  If Jean had suddenly risen out of the snow he would not have used his pistol unless forced to do so.  He wanted to be hand to hand with the treacherous half-breed, and his breath came in panting eagerness as he ran.

Suddenly he stopped short.  He had struck the trail.  Here Croisset had stood, fifty yards from his window, when he fired.  The snow was beaten down, and from the spot his retreating footsteps led toward the forest.  Like a dog Philip followed the trail.  The first timber was thinned by the axe, and the moon lighted up the white spaces ahead of him.  He was half across the darker wall of the spruce when his heart gave a sudden jump.  He had heard the snarl of a dog, the lash of a whip, a man’s low voice cursing the beast he was striking.  The sounds came from the dense cover of the spruce, and told him that Jean was not looking for immediate pursuit.  He slipped in among the shadows quietly, and a few steps brought him to a smaller open space where a few trees had been cut.  In this little clearing a slim dark figure of a man was straightening out the tangled traces of a sledge-team.

Philip could not see his face, but he knew that it was Jean.  It was Jean’s figure, Jean’s movement, his low, sharp voice as he spoke to the dogs.  Man and huskies were not twenty steps from him.  With a tense breath Philip replaced his pistol in its holster.  He did not want to kill, and he possessed a proper respect for the hair-trigger mechanism of his automatic.  In the fight he anticipated with Jean the weapon would be safer in its holster than in his hand.  Jean was at present unarmed, except for his hunting-knife.  His rifle leaned against a tree, and in another moment Philip was between the gun and the half-breed.

One of the sledge dogs betrayed him.  At its low and snarling warning the half-breed whirled about with the alertness of a lynx, and he was half ready when Philip launched himself at his throat.  They went down free of the dogs, the forest man under.  One of Philip’s hands had reached his enemy’s throat, but with a swift movement of his arm the half-breed wrenched it off and slipped out from under his assailant with the agility of an eel.  Both were on their feet in an instant, facing each other in the tiny moonlit arena a dozen feet from the silent and watchful dogs.

Even now Philip could not see the half-breed’s features because of a hood drawn closely about his face.  The “breed” had made no effort to draw a weapon, and Philip flung himself upon him again.  Thus in open battle his greater physical strength and advantage of fifty pounds in weight would have won for Philip.  But the forest man’s fighting is filled with the elusive ermine’s trickery and the lithe quickness of the big, fur-padded cat of the trap-lines.