He put the picture back into his pocket, and rose to his feet.  Mechanically he slipped on his coat.  He went to the door, opened it softly, and passed out into the night.  The moon was above him, like a great, white disc.  The sky burned with stars.  He could see now to the foot of the ridge over which Mukoki had gone, and the clearing about the cabin lay in a cold and luminous glory.  Tavish, if he had been caught in the twilight darkness and had waited for the moon to rise, would be showing up soon.

He walked to the side of the cabin and looked back.  Quite distinctly he could see Tavish’s meat, suspended from a stout sapling that projected straight out from under the edge of the roof.  It hung there darkly, a little in shadow, swinging gently in the wind that had risen, and tap-tap-tapping against the logs.  David moved toward it, gazing at the edge of the forest in which he thought he had heard a sound that was like the creak of a sledge runner.  He hoped it was Tavish returning.  For several moments he listened with his back to the cabin.  Then he turned.  He was very close to the thing hanging from the sapling.  It was swinging slightly.  The moon shone on it, and then—­Great God!  A face—­a human face!  A face, bearded, with bulging, staring eyes, gaping mouth—­a grin of agony frozen in it!  And it was tapping, tapping, tapping!

He staggered back with a dreadful cry.  He swayed to the door, groped blindly for the latch, stumbled in clumsily, like a drunken man.  The horror of that lifeless, grinning face was in his voice.  He had awakened the Missioner, who was sitting up, staring at him.

“Tavish ...” cried David chokingly; “Tavish—­is dead!” and he pointed to the end of the cabin where they could hear again that tap-tap-tapping against the log wall.

CHAPTER XII

Not until afterward did David realize how terribly his announcement of Tavish’s death must have struck into the soul of Father Roland.  For a few seconds the Missioner did not move.  He was wide awake, he had heard, and yet he looked at David dumbly, his two hands gripping his blanket.  When he did move, it was to turn his face slowly toward the end of the cabin where the thing was hanging, with only the wall between.  Then, still slowly, he rose to his feet.

David thought he had only half understood.

“Tavish—­is dead!” he repeated huskily, straining to swallow the thickening in his throat.  “He is out there—­hanging by his neck—­dead!”

Dead! He emphasized that word—­spoke it twice.