“And the broken paw.  I suppose that was done by a club, too?” interrupted David.

“It was broken like that when I traded for him a year ago, m’sieu.  I have not maimed him.  And ... yes, you may have the beast!  May the saints preserve you!”

“And his name?”

“The Indian who owned him as a puppy five years ago called him Baree, which among the Dog Ribs means Wild Blood.  He should have been called The Devil.”

Thoreau shrugged his shoulders, as though the matter and its consequences were now off his hands, and turned in the direction of the cabin.  As he followed the Frenchman, David looked back at Baree.  The big husky had risen from the snow.  He was standing at the full length of his chain, and as David disappeared among the spruce a low whine that was filled with a strange yearning followed him.  He did not hear the whine, but there came to him distinctly a moment later the dog’s racking cough, and he shivered, and his eyes burned into Thoreau’s broad back as he thought of the fresh blood-clots that were staining the white snow.

CHAPTER VIII

Much to Thoreau’s amazement Father Roland made no objection to David’s ownership of Baree, and when the Frenchman described with many gesticulations of wonder what had happened between that devil-dog and the man, he was still more puzzled by the look of satisfaction in the Little Missioner’s face.  In David there had come the sudden awakening of something which had for a long time been dormant within him, and Father Roland saw this change, and felt it, even before David said, when Thoreau had turned away with a darkly suggestive shrug of his shoulders: 

“That poor devil of a beast is down and out, mon Pere.  I have never been so bad as that; never.  Kill him?  Bah!  If this magical north country of yours will make a man out of a human derelict it will surely work some sort of a transformation in a dog that has been clubbed into imbecility.  Will it not?”

It was not the David of yesterday or the day before that was speaking.  There was a passion in his voice, a deep contempt, a half taunt, a tremble of anger.  There was a flush in his cheeks, too, and a spark of fire in his eyes.  In his heart Father Roland whispered to himself that this change in David was like a conflagration, and he rejoiced without speaking, fearing that words might quench the effect of it.

David was looking at him as if he expected an answer.

“What an accursed fool a man is to waste his soul and voice in lamentation—­especially his voice,” he went on harshly, his teeth gleaming for an instant in a bitter smile.  “One ought to act and not whine.  That beast back there is ready to act.  He would tear Thoreau’s jugular out if he had half a chance.  And I ... why, I sneaked off like a whipped cur.  That’s why Baree is better than I am, even though he is nothing more than a four-footed brute.  In that room I should have had the moral courage that Baree has; I should have killed—­killed them both!” He shrugged his shoulders.  “I am quite convinced that it would have been justice, mon Pere.  What do you think?”