when the lead-dog suddenly stopped and a low, lingering whine drifted back to them.  David had never heard anything like that whine.  It swept through the line of dogs, from throat to throat, and the beasts stood stiff-legged and stark in their traces, staring with eight pairs of restlessly blazing eyes into the wall of darkness ahead.  The Cree had turned, but the sharp command on his lips had frozen there.  David saw him standing ahead of the team as silent and as motionless as rock.  From him he looked into the Missioner’s face.  Father Roland was staring.  There was a strange suspense in his breathing.  And then, suddenly, the lead-dog sat back on his haunches and turning his gray muzzle up to the sky emitted a long and mournful howl.  There was something about it that made David shiver.  Mukoki came staggering back through the snow like a sick man.

“Nipoo-win Ooyoo!” he said, his eyes shining like points of flame.  A shiver seemed to be running through him.

For a moment the Missioner did not seem to hear him.  Then he cried: 

“Give them the whip!  Drive them on!”

The Cree turned, unwinding his long lash.

“Nipoo-win Ooyoo!” he muttered again.

The whip cracked over the backs of the huskies, the end of it stinging the rump of the lead-dog, who was master of them all.  A snarl rose for an instant in his throat, then he straightened out, and the dogs lurched forward.  Mukoki ran ahead, so that the lead-dog was close at his heels.

“What did he say?” asked David.

In the gloom the Missioner made a gesture of protest with his two hands.  David could no longer see his face.

“He is superstitious,” he growled.  “He is absurd.  He would make the very devil’s flesh creep.  He says that old Beaver has given the death howl.  Bah!”

David could feel the other’s shudder in the darkness.  They went on for another hundred yards.  With a low word Mukoki stopped the team.  The dogs were whining softly, staring straight ahead, when David and the Missioner joined the Cree.

Father Roland pointed to a dark blot in the night, fifty paces beyond them.  He spoke to David.

“There is Tavish’s cabin.  Come.  We will see.”

Mukoki remained with the team.  They could hear the dogs whining as they advanced.  The cabin took shape in their faces—­grotesque, dark, lifeless.  It was a foreboding thing, that cabin.  He remembered in a flash all that the Missioner had told him about Tavish.  His pulse was beating swiftly.  A shiver ran up his back, and he was filled with a strange dread.  Father Roland’s voice startled him.

“Tavish!  Tavish!” it called.

They stood close to the door, but heard no answer.  Father Roland stamped with his foot, and scraped with his toe on the ground.

“See, the snow has been cleaned away recently,” he said.  “Mukoki is a fool.  He is superstitious.  He made me, for an instant—­afraid.”