"Another half hour and we would have been through the forest, and just beyond that--in the edge of the plain--are those whom you seek, Meleese and her people.

That is what I started to tell you back there when you shut me up.

_Mon Dieu_, if it were not for Meleese I would let you go on.

And then--what would happen then, M'seur, if you made your visit to them in broad day?
Listen!" Jean lifted a warning hand.

Faintly there came to them through the forest the distant baying of a hound.
"That is one of our dogs from the Mackenzie country," he went on softly, an insinuating triumph in his low voice.