Then there came to his ears the sound that had stopped Croisset--a low, moaning whine which seemed to have neither beginning nor end, but which was borne in on his senses as though it were a part of the soft movement of the air he breathed--a note of infinite sadness which held him startled and without movement, as it held Jean Croisset.

And just as he thought that the thing had died away, the wailing came again, rising higher and higher, until at last there rose over him a single long howl that chilled the blood to his very marrow.

It was like the wolf-howl of that first night he had looked on the wilderness, and yet unlike it; in the first it had been the cry of the savage, of hunger, of the unending desolation of life that had thrilled him.

In this it was death.

He stood shivering as Croisset came down to him, his thin face shining white in the starlight.
There was no other sound save the excited beating of life in their own bodies when Jean spoke.
"M'seur, our dogs howl like that only when some one is dead or about to die," he whispered.