open behind him. A bar of moonlight leapt instantly inside, as it had been a fugitive who had been kept long waiting. Then he heard the voice of Strangeways calling, "Granger, Granger." He rose up hurriedly, thinking that perhaps Spurling had been driven back by the blizzard and was returning to his danger. When he reached the threshold he saw only this—the moon tossing restlessly in a cloudy sky, shining above a shadowy land of white; Strangeways standing twenty paces distant with his back towards him; and, seated on their haunches between Strangeways and the threshold, five lank grey huskies, one of which had a patch of brindled-brown upon its right hindquarters and a yellow face. CHAPTER VII [86] [86] THE CORPORAL SETS OUT It would have been easy to shoot Strangeways at that time, and he must have known it; yet, he was so much a gentleman that he accepted the risk, and had the decency to turn his back when circumstances compelled him to give a man the lie. Granger wondered whether courtesy was the motive; or whether he was only testing him out of curiosity, to see of what fresh vulgarity of deceit he was capable. As he stood in the doorway, his gaze wandered from the broad shoulders of Corporal Strangeways, late stroke of the 'Varsity Eight, to the treacherous eyes of the gaunt grey beast before him which, by reason of its unusual markings and untimely appearance, had once and forever thrown Spurling's game away. There was something Satanic and suggestive of evil about those green and jasper eyes, and the manner in which they blinked out upon him from the furious yellow head. Were they prompting him to crime, saying, "Why don't you fire? He can't defend himself; see, his back is turned?" No, not that. He half-believed that the brute was endowed with human intelligence, and had betrayed his late master of set purpose—perhaps, in revenge for the many beatings he had received on the trail from Selkirk to Murder Point. There was a vileness in the creature's look that was degrading
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