“He is bad, m’sieu, bad!  He is the worst dog in all this country.  He was born an outcast—­among the wolves—­and his heart is filled with murder.  He is a quarter wolf, and you can’t club it out of him.  Half a dozen masters have owned him, and none of them has been able to club it out of him.  I, myself, have beaten him until he lay as if dead, but it did no good.  He has killed two of my dogs.  He has leaped at my throat.  I am afraid of him.  I chained him to that tree a month ago to keep him away from the other dogs, and since then I have not been able to unleash him.  He would tear me into pieces.  Yesterday I beat him until he was almost dead, and still he was ready to go at my throat.  So I am determined to kill him.  He is no good.  Step a little aside, m’sieu, while I put a bullet through his head!”

He raised his rifle again.  David put a hand on it.

“I can unleash him,” he said.

Before the other could speak, he had walked boldly to the tree.  Baree did not turn his head—­did not for an instant take his eye from Thoreau.  There came the click of the snap that fastened the chain around the body of the spruce, and David stood with the loose end of the chain in his hand.

“There!”

He laughed a little proudly.

“And I didn’t use a club,” he added.

Thoreau gasped “Mon Dieu!” and sat down on the birch log as though the strength had gone from his legs.

David rattled the chain and then re-fastened it about the spruce.  Baree was still watching Thoreau, who sat staring at him as if the beast had suddenly changed his shape and species.

In David’s breast there was the thrill of a new triumph.  He had done it unconsciously, without fear, and without feeling that there had been any great danger.  In those few minutes something of his old self had returned into him; he felt a new excitement pumping the blood through his heart, and he felt the warm glow of it in his body.  Baree had awakened something within him—­Baree and the club.  He went to Thoreau, who had risen from the log.  He laughed again, a bit exultantly.

“I am going north with Father Roland,” he said.  “Will you let me have the dog, Thoreau?  It will save you the trouble of killing him.”

Thoreau stared at him blankly for a moment before he answered.

“That dog?  You?  Into the North?” He shot a look full of hatred and disgust at Baree.  “Would you risk it, m’sieu?”

“Yes.  It is an adventure I would very much like to try.  You may think it strange, Thoreau, but that dog—­ugly and fierce as he is—­has found a place with me.  I like him.  And I fancy he has begun to like me.”

“But look at his eye, m’sieu——­”

“Which eye?” demanded David.  “The one you have shut with a club?”

“He deserved it,” muttered Thoreau.  “He snapped at my hand.  But I mean the other eye, m’sieu—­the one that is glaring at us now like a red bloodstone with the heart of a devil in it!  I tell you he is a quarter wolf....”