"Sounds like a husky," observed Pete Connear.
They could hear snarling and groaning with now and then a whimper of fear as from a frightened animal.
"No, it's a human voice," declared Dunvegan. He strode across the room and kicked up the latch.
The door swung back swiftly and in bounded the weird shape of Gaspard Follet, the little idiot. He dashed forward as if propelled from a catapult, but the chief trader's peremptory voice halted him.
"Stop," Dunvegan commanded. "What in Rupert's name is the matter with you?"
Gaspard stood speechless. His owlish eyes glared in a perfect frenzy of real or simulated terror, and he hopped from one foot to the other in the center of the floor, hunching his dwarfed shoulders with a horrid, convulsive movement.
For the most part amazed silence struck the men, but Maskwa, the Ojibway fort runner, regarded Follet with the superstition of his race and jabbered in guttural accents.
"The Little Fool has seen a god," he asserted in Ojibway. "He has spoken with Nenaubosho!"
"Non," was Basil Dreaulond's more commonplace explanation. "De mad giddés bite heem. Dis Gaspard goin' crazy lak' dose yelpin' beas'."
But the chief trader bade them speculate in silence.