And then—­

From Durant came a warning cry.  It was too late.  A lean gray streak of vengeance and retribution, Miki was at the end of his chain and at Le Beau’s throat.  Nanette heard!  Through dazed eyes she saw!  She reached out gropingly and struggled to her feet, and looked just once down upon the snow.  Then, with a terrible cry, she staggered toward the cabin.

When Durant gathered courage to drag Le Beau out of Miki’s reach Miki made no movement to harm him.  Again, perhaps, it was the Beneficent Spirit that told him his duty was done.  He went back into his cage, and lying there on his belly looked forth at Durant.

And Durant, looking at the blood-stained snow and the dead body of The Brute, whispered to himself again: 

“Mon dieu! he is a devil!”

In the cabin, Nanette was upon her knees before the crucifix.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There are times when death is a shock, but not a grief.  And so it was with Nanette Le Beau.  With her own eyes she had looked upon the terrible fate of her husband, and it was not in her gentle soul to weep or wish him alive again.  At last there had overtaken him what Le bon dieu had intended him to receive some day:  justice.  And for the baby’s sake more than her own Nanette was not sorry.  Durant, whose soul was only a little less wicked than the dead man’s, had not even waited for a prayer—­had not asked her what to do.  He had chopped a hole in the frozen earth and had buried Le Beau almost before his body was cold.  And Nanette was not sorry for that.  The Brute was gone.  He was gone for ever.  He would never strike her again.  And because of the baby she offered up a prayer of gratitude to God.

In his prison-cage of sapling bars Miki cringed on his belly at the end of his chain.  He had scarcely moved since those terrible moments in which he had torn the life out of the man-brute’s throat.  He had not even growled at Durant when he dragged the body away.  Upon him had fallen a fearful and overwhelming oppression.  He was not thinking of his own brutal beatings, or of the death which Le Beau had been about to inflict upon him with the club; he did not feel the presence of pain in his bruised and battered body, nor in his bleeding jaws and whip-lashed eyes.  He was thinking of Nanette, the woman.  Why had she run away with that terrible cry when he killed the man-beast?  Was it not the man-beast who had struck her down, and whose hands were at her white throat when he sprang the length of his chain and tore out his jugular?  Then why was it that she ran away, and did not come back?

He whimpered softly.

The afternoon was almost gone, and the early gloom of mid-winter night in the Northland was settling thickly over the forests.  In that gloom the dark face of Durant appeared at the bars of Miki’s prison.  Instinctively Miki had hated this foxhunter from the edge of the Barrens, just as he had hated Le Beau, for in their brutish faces as well as in their hearts they were like brothers.  Yet he did not growl at Durant as he peered through.  He did not even move.