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Then a faint and distant voice reached him, and he knew that this man-wolf was speaking. "So you'd marry her," it said. "You! But we'll take no chances no chances. I could tear your throat out, but I won't; no, I won't do that. A little blood just a little." And then the dreaming man felt the fingers moving about his throat. They felt cold and clammy, and the night air chilled him.
So they took down to the piskun pemmican and nice back fat and placed it there, and many of them hid close by. After dark the wolves came, as was their custom, and when the man-wolf saw the good food, he ran to it and began to eat.
A slight smile flitted across the man's face, and then, without warning, he sank to the floor in a dead faint. His mighty strength had been turned to the weakness of water, and the iron will had at length relaxed its hold upon the enfeebled body. As the man-wolf fell, a stream of blood trickled from his mouth, and he choked for breath as though strangling.
"Fine is no name for it," rejoined the other. "But I do hope we will have the chance of meeting Mr. Homolupus once more and of thanking him for what he has done. We owe so much to him that, man-wolf or no man-wolf, I consider him a splendid fellow." In spite of their impatience to start southwards, our lads were still compelled to spend two weeks longer at Locked Harbour.
One night all the wolves went down to the pen to get meat, and when they had come close to it, the man-wolf said to his brothers, "Stop here for a little while and I will go down and fix the places so that you will not be caught."
The rest of his body was not changed. In those days the people used to make holes in the pis-kun walls and set snares, and when wolves and other animals came to steal meat, they were caught by the neck. One night the wolves all went down to the pis-kun to steal meat, and when they got close to it, the man-wolf said, "Stand here a little.
How did you lose the power of speech? How did you become so severely wounded? Can't you tell me some of these things?" For answer Mr. Balfour wrote: "Perhaps, some time. Tell first how you came here." So Cabot, forced to curb for the present his own overpowering curiosity, sat down and told of all that had happened since the departure of the man-wolf from Locked Harbour.
At Dole, two years afterwards, Gilles Garnier, a native of Lyons, was indicted for being a loupgarou, or man-wolf, and for prowling in that shape about the country at night to devour little children.
With these congenial occupations, time never hung heavily in the wilderness home of the Man-wolf, and, though bitter cold might reign outside, fierce storms rage, and driving snows pile themselves into mountainous drifts, neither hunger nor cold could penetrate its snug interior, warmed and lighted by the magic of modern science. With the passing weeks the old year died and a new one was born.
In fact I have never seen him, but I think your messenger must be one and the same with your man-wolf, since he signed his note 'Homolupus." "His note," repeated Cabot curiously. "Did he send you a note?" "Not exactly; but he left one for me at a place near the station, where he has often left furs to be exchanged for goods, and called my attention to it by a signal of rifle shots.
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