Four years of that! The Police would not believe it.

They laughed at the occasional rumors that drifted in from the far places; rumors that Bram had been seen, and that his great voice had been heard rising above the howl of his pack on still winter nights, and that half-breeds and Indians had come upon his trails, here and there--at widely divergent places.

It was the French half-breed superstition of the chasse-galere that chiefly made them disbelieve, and the chasse-galere is a thing not to be laughed at in the northland.

It is composed of creatures who have sold their souls to the devil for the power of navigating the air, and there were those who swore with their hands on the crucifix of the Virgin that they had with their own eyes seen Bram and his wolves pursuing the shadowy forms of great beasts through the skies.
So the Police believed that Bram was dead; and Bram, meanwhile, keeping himself from all human eyes, was becoming more and more each day like the wolves who were his brothers.

But the white blood in a man dies hard, and always there flickered in the heart of Bram's huge chest a great yearning.