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 moose calves, long-legged, long-headed and ungainly like herself. While she was licking them and murmuring soft mother sounds to them, a huge black bear, still gaunt and hungry from his winter hardships, came prowling past the thicket. He heard those mother sounds and understood them. Pausing for a second or two to locate them accurately, he crept up close to the fringing branches, gathered his mighty muscles for the spring, and crashed in, counting on instant kill. But a massive drooping bough which he had not marked in the gloom, diverted slightly that deadly rush, and the blow of his pile-driving paw, which should have broken the mother's back, merely slashed her lean rump as she wheeled nimbly to face the attack and fell on the uplifted head of one of the calves, crushing out its hardly started life.

In the next fraction of a moment there was another crash, and Red Bull, with a grunt of rage, came charging into the battle. His armed front struck the bear full in the ribs, jarring the breath from his lungs with a gasping cough, and almost bowling him over.

But Red Bull did not understand his dreadful adversary's method of fighting. Instead of springing back, and fencing for a chance to repeat that mighty buffet, he kept at close quarters, pushing and goring in blind fury. The bear, twisting about, caught him a sweeping stroke on the side


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 of the head which raked half his face away, and then, lunging clear, brought down the other huge forepaw on the back of his neck. It was as irresistible, that blow, as the fall of a boulder. Red Bull sank upon his knees and slowly rolled over, the vertebræ of his neck not only dislocated but smashed to splinters.

But his sharp horns had done their work, piercing to the bear's vitals and ripping his ribs open. The desperate mother, meanwhile, had been slashing his haunches to ribbons with mad blows of her knife-edged hoofs. The bear was in a bad way. Whining and choking, he dragged himself off, making all haste to escape the punishment of those pounding and rending hoofs. The frantic cow followed him clear of the thicket, and then rushed back to the remaining calf. Quivering with anxiety, she stood over it, licking it and nosing it to assure herself it was unhurt. And in her mother solicitude she had not even a glance to spare for the mangled body of her protector, who had so splendidly repaid the debt of her long adoption.

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to be done, so few brief weeks to do it in, that the ardent arctic summer was working overtime. The long, long months of sunless night and unimaginable cold were to be undone—the months of black and shrieking storm, of intolerable winds death-cold from the voids of space, of intolerable stillness when the ghost-lights danced low above the endless, naked ice and death of the Roof-of-the-world. The sun, in haste to console after his long forgetfulness, was circling in the sky throughout the whole twenty-four hours, never quite disappearing below the hazy pink horizon. Under the unremitting pour of his eager beams, icy pinnacles cracked and crumbled; deep fissures of ineffable sapphire opened in the icewalls of eternal glacier, and ran with sharp reports along the tumbled fields of the floe. Here and there appeared wide patches of green and dancing water, with narrow lanes leading out to the open sea, where it chafed incessantly at its shrinking boundaries.

Shoreward, low ridges, and raw, jagged teeth of rock, black and slate-blue and rust-red, came


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 into view above the limitless white desolation. Along the southerly bases of the rocks, and in every sunward-facing, sheltered hollow, where the harsh soil was bare of snow and thawed and warmed to a depth of two or three inches over its foundations of impregnable frost, a film of light but vivid green was springing into hurried life, and already starred thick with tiny blooms, pink, yellow, and ethereal lavender, all in haste to fertilize and be fertilized, and to ripen their precious seeds and drop them back into the mould, ere the night of cold should again close down upon them. Amid the blooms bustled innumerable tiny flies and gleaming beetles, with here and there a flickering mite of a butterfly, paper-white or pallid mauve. Over the faces of the rocks were spreading stains and smudges of pinkish grey and dull greenish yellow, where the lichens were reproducing themselves in the fecundating radiance. The still air was faintly musical with the babble of innumerable rills.

At one point, through some whim of tide and current, the ice-floe had drawn quite clear of the shore, leaving some three hundred yards of beach un-covered. It was a beach ribbed with ice-ground ridges of purple-black rock, which now, at low tide, held a miscellaneous drift of weeds and disrooted mussels and stranded crustaceans in their shallow intervening pools.


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 From behind a jutting shoulder of black-and-purple rock came, suddenly and silently, a long, slouching, terrifying figure, the great white bear of the arctic. His narrow, low-browed snaky head and black-tipped muzzle were stretched out straight before him and his nostrils quivered as he sniffed the clear air for the taint of anything that might ease his mighty appetite. Living prey he did not expect, at the moment, or the terror of the North would not have shown his dread shape so openly upon that naked stretch of sunlit shore. But for nearly an hour, with the patience of all great hunters, he had lain hidden and motionless among the rocks, hoping that the seals, his favourite quarry, might be tempted shoreward to bask in this sheltered cove. Balked of this hope, he wandered down the beach to see what gleanings from the harvest of the tides might be gathered in the rock-pools.

A few mussels and whelks he had already scooped up and crunched greedily; a glutinous, musky-flavoured squid he had gulped down with relish, when he came upon a prize worth his quest. It was a big rock-cod, lodged, white-belly upward, in a fissure of the ledge. He clawed it forth and turned it over exultantly. It was fresh-killed—a great mouthful bitten cleanly out of the thick of the back.

Hastily bolting the fish, this wary hunter shrank


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 down flat upon his belly, making himself as small and inconspicuous as possible, and scanned the sea beyond the ice with savage, hopeful eyes. He knew at once that that bite was the work of a seal, of a seal killing eagerly, this way and that, among swarming victims, without stopping to gather in the booty.

That seal and his fellows, their hunger glutted, might presently come out upon the floe to bask and doze in the sunshine.

Soundlessly as a cloud-shadow, and almost as unnoticeably, the bear twisted and crawled his way out to the edge of the bright floe, and flattened himself down between two hummocks. As soon as he was motionless, he seemed to melt from view, so perfectly did he match himself to his surroundings. The keenest, most suspicious eye would have had to look twice or thrice before detecting, among the greyish and yellowish blurs upon the shadowy whiteness, the outlines of that sinister form and snaky, black-snouted head. The point of blackness, instead of betraying its owner, had the effect of making his faint outlines less conspicuous and diverting the eye from them. Here he lay rigid as if frozen into the ice, hoping that one of the expected seals would emerge close before him, within reach of the lightning stroke of his armed paw. If not, then he would wait till the seals had floundered out upon the floe, inter-


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 cept their retreat, and probably secure at least one victim before they could get back to their refuge in the water.

The bear had lain there in tense expectancy for perhaps a dozen minutes when suddenly, just beneath his nose, the grey-green sea surged heavily. A huge, glistening, rusty black head shot upward, almost in the watcher's face; and he found himself confronted by the hideous, tusked and whiskered mask of a gigantic bull-walrus.

The two massive yellow tusks growing downward from the mighty upper jaw of the walrus were over two feet in length, straight, gleaming, and tapered to a fine point. The long, stiff whiskers standing out on each side of the muzzle were thick as porcupine quills. The small, steady eyes, set deep in the low-crowned skull, flamed into sudden rage as they found themselves staring into the fierce eyes of the bear.

For some seconds the two great beasts, thus brought so startlingly face to face, eyed each other unwaveringly without a movement on either side. The bear, in the first wrath of his disappointment, itched to slash across that grotesque and defiant mask with his rending paws. But his sagacity, well trained in the harsh struggle of arctic life, restrained him. Presently he shifted his gaze for a swift instant, and noted that the surface of the sea all about the edge of the floe was dotted with


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 other dark and glistening whiskered heads, most of them tusked like that of the bull before him. He knew that the tuskless heads were those of the fat young calves. The walrus herd was coming ashore. He reflected that, secure in their strength and their numbers, they might grow careless in the lazy sunshine, and then, if they thought he had gone away, one of those calves might possibly stray within his reach. In any case, he had nothing to gain but discomfiture if he should remain to try conclusions with the giant walrus—who at this moment seemed quite ready for the adventure.

With a throaty snarl the bear arose to his full height, turned his furry rump contemptuously upon his rival, and stalked off to the beach to disappear among the rocks, as if acknowledging that it was useless for him to try to hunt walrus. Immediately the bull heaved his enormous, warty carcass higher from the water, hooked his tusks over the solid edge of the floe, and with a loud grunt, drew himself forth upon the ice, where he lay sprawling complacently, to watch the foe's retreat. In five minutes or so, the whole herd, following with confidence their invincible leader, had lumbered forth upon the floe with noisy splashings and gruntings, and were basking their uncouth bulks in the genial glow.

Counting himself, and not without reason, King of the Floes, Ah-wook, the giant walrus, in the


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 complacency of his self-trust forgot all about the great white bear as soon as that crafty marauder had vanished from his sight. And the whole herd forgot with him. The only foe whom Ah-wook had learned to fear was man—represented by the Eskimo, with his swift kayak and deadly swift harpoon. For months there had been no sign of man in all that region. It was a fitting time, when the arctic sun burned so benignly, for the King of the Floes to relax his vigilance.

With ponderous floppings and gruntings, the herd scattered all over the ice. Their rough and oily-black hides, almost bursting with fatness, glistened in the sunlight. The unwieldy cows, tusked like the bulls and almost as ferocious-looking (but the tenderest and most devoted of mothers), sprawled happily as they nursed their ever-greedy calves. These latter, many of them almost as big as their mothers, but as yet without tusks, were as grotesquely unlovely as the offspring of such monstrous parents might be expected to be. As a rule, there is some charm or grace or winsomeness to be found in the younglings of even the clumsiest and ugliest of the wild kindreds. But the baby walrus can only be accounted a gross caricature of babyhood.

It chanced that one young cow, less wary and more adventurous than her companions, was smitten with a whim to try basking on the dry,


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 grey, sun-warmed ledges of the beach instead of on the ice. With her half-grown calf floundering anxiously at her side, she slipped off the floe, and with gusty snortings worked her way some twenty or thirty paces up the shore till she gained a flat ledge which was precisely to her liking. Settling herself complacently,—for never before had she experienced so warm a couch,—she turned and called to the calf, which, finding the rocks uncomfortable to travel over, had dropped a few yards behind. The fat and flabby youngster squealed protestingly, as if to say he was coming as fast as he could; and then, seized with sudden fear of the strange element upon which he found himself, he stopped, and looked back longingly at the safe water and the familiar ice.

At this moment, from behind the nearest shoulder of rock a huge white shape burst forth, launched itself, with a clatter of iron claws on ledge and gravel, across the open, and fell upon the unhappy calf. One blow of the terrific mailed paw (which looked so furry soft) smashed the youngster's neck, and it collapsed, quivering like an enormous mass of dark-brown jelly. In the same second the bear seized it by the head and with frantic haste started to drag the prize away to some safe refuge among the rocks—for well he knew the devotion and the blind fury of the walrus mother.


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 In spite of the great bulk of the carcass—little short of half a ton in weight—the bear handled it almost as a fox would have handled an extra-fat hare. But for all his agility and his tremendous strength, he was not quite quick enough to get away with the prize. With a bellowing scream of grief and rage, the mother hurled herself downward from her ledge, rearing and plunging over the rocks at such speed that the slaughterer was overtaken before he had gained a score of yards. With an angry growl! he dropped his booty and sprang aside just in time to escape such a blow from those pile-driving tusks as would have brought his career to a gory end. Circling nimbly, as the mother came down upon her flippers at the end of her plunge and paused half covering the body of her young, he dashed in and sprang upon her back, tearing savagely with his murderous claws.

But the cow's hide was too tough, the padding of blubber beneath it too thick, for either his claws or his teeth to make much impression upon it. He tore a couple of hideous red gashes, indeed; but to the maddened cow they were mere surface wounds, of as little consequence as a bloody nose to a fighting schoolboy. She reared her monstrous shoulders again and shook off her adversary, at the same time swinging about with such lightning speed that she caught him a glancing stroke upon


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 The King of the Floes 6r the rump with one tusk as he scurried out of reach. Slight enough it seemed, that blow, but it tore away fur and hide, and from its effects the bear was to go limping for weeks thereafter.

Recognizing himself overmatched, but seeing that the cow was too engrossed with her dead to attempt the vain task of pursuing him, the bear sat down on his haunches and surveyed the situation in a cold fury, his jaws slavering red foam, his splendid white coat dishevelled and plastered with blood. What he saw was enough to daunt the stoutest heart that ever throbbed beneath a furry hide. The giant Ah-wook, grunting his wrath, was just floundering up from the lip of the floe; and on either side of him a line of bulls and cows only less monstrous than their chief, their whiskers bristling, their vengeful tusks gleaming and lunging as the dreadful array wallowed forward. With rather more haste than consisted with his dignity the bear made off, limping, and climbed to a ridge where he knew no walrus could ever follow him. There, well hidden, he lay down to lick his wound and to watch what his foes might do.

Seeing their enemy thus routed, the angry herd calmed down, and presently turned back to their basking on the floe. But Ah-wook came straight till he reached the side of the bereaved cow. To


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 his practised eye it was plain at once that the calf was dead, and this knowledge he somehow conveyed to the mother. But she paid no heed to him. She was determined to get her young, dead or alive, back to the kind, familiar shelter of the sea. Hooking her tusks beneath the lax bulk, she lifted and dragged it clumsily till she had got it half-way down the slope. Then it fell into a deep crevice and jammed itself there in such a way that she could get no hold or purchase upon it. Ah-wook, though he kept close to her side protectingly, made no attempt to help her. The youngster was dead, and therefore of no more consequence in his eyes. At last, in despair, the mother gave up, and made off sullenly towards the floe; and Ah-wook followed close behind her, from time to time pausing to look back and glare defiance at the lonely line of rocks.

As he watched his invincible adversaries depart, leaving his victim behind them, the bear licked his lips in satisfaction and contempt. He was going to win, after all. But he was in no hurry. He would let the stupid sea-beasts forget their anger before he would descend to reclaim the booty. He knew the walrus were great feeders. They would soon grow hungry, and would betake themselves again to the sea to grub for their coarse provender on the muddy bottom of the bay. He himself was hungry, to be sure; but his appetite had


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 already waited some time, and could afford to wait a little longer.

As he lay there in the sun, nursing his well-founded anticipations, and disturbed only by the ache in his wounded haunch, he caught sight of a pair of little blue arctic foxes stealthily creeping forth upon the beach. Their fine noses wrinkled and sniffed hungrily as they caught the taint of fresh blood upon the air. Presently they located the body of the dead walrus calf wedged in its crevice.

To the cunning little prowlers such a find was almost too good to be true. It aroused their suspicions. Surely there was a catch in it somewhere. They crept forward with the utmost caution, glancing about them at every noiseless step, and taking advantage of every cranny or boulder to conceal their advance.

At first glimpse of the small intruders the bear had given vent to a low growl of annoyance. The tiny beasts, of course, could make no serious impression on that vast bulk of flesh. They could do no more than gnaw away some fragments of the tough hide. But like all the hunting beasts, the bear was very jealous of his kill, and hated to have any other creature, however humble, sample the feast before he himself had had a chance to satisfy his appetite. He restrained himself, however, till the foremost of the two foxes was


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 within a foot or two of the body. Then suddenly he leaned forth head and shoulders from his hiding-place, and uttered a short, strident snarl of menace.

The foxes cast one look upon the dreadful, grinning mask that glared down upon them from the ridge, then scurried off respectfully. But as soon as they felt themselves safely out of sight, they halted, circled about and crept to a place of concealment in the very crest of the ridge, whence they could command a clear view of the bear's subsequent actions. They considered, not unreasonably, that there should be some substantial remnants to be picked up after his banquet.

The bear, meanwhile, was growing impatient. The pain of his wound was not improving his temper. But the walrus herd still basked com—placently on the ice, in full view; and their colossal leader, keeping his post on the landward edge of the floe, appeared dangerously alert and watchful. The hungry bear felt that there was nothing to do but continue the dull game of waiting.

How much longer his prudence might have kept curb upon his appetite it would be hard to say; but now an unforeseen factor came into the problem. Though the vast northern solitudes seem so empty, they are nevertheless secretly populous, teeming with furtive life; and news of any considerable killing—which must mean food for some


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 one—travels mysteriously. The wandering airs make haste to carry it, and none who receives the tidings is left indifferent.

A pack of half a dozen arctic wolves, long-jawed and ravenous, emerged from a deep ravine which cleft the ridge, and trotted boldly forth upon the beach, sniffing interrogatively. Straightway they spotted the rich prize there in plain view, jammed in the crevice. And straightway, disdaining craft or investigation, confident in their ferocity and their speed, they swept down upon it at full gallop.

For the patient watcher on the ridge this was too much. With a roar of indignation he projected himself down the slope like an avalanche, and reached the body of the young walrus some ten paces ahead of the wolves. Standing over it on three legs, he turned, with fangs bared and one paw uplifted, and faced the pack with a low snarl of warning.

The wolves, well knowirig the power of that terrific paw, halted abruptly. The leader sat upon his haunches, with his tongue hanging out, and blinked sagaciously. The rest of the pack divided, two to one side and three to the other, and encircled their huge antagonist, their eyes glinting green, and their jaws slavering. Keeping just at a safe distance of a dozen feet, or so, they uttered never a sound; and the bear, too, stopped


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 his snarling, and waited. He felt pretty confident that, bold though they were, they would not dare to close with him; but he was taking no risks.

And out on the floe, not fifty paces away, the walrus lifted their tusked and whiskered heads and stared with lazy curiosity. Ah-wook, indeed, went so far as to flounder to the very edge of the floe, half minded to take a hand in the affair and see those puny l-and-beasts scatter before his onset. He feared neither bear nor wolves. But he was so secure in his strength and in the armour of his massive hide that it hardly seemed worth his while to score so cheap a triumph. In the end his indolence conquered, and he was content to watch the drama.

It was the bear, at length, who decided to force the issue. Suddenly, like a coiled spring let loose, he hurled himself at the leader of the pack, who leaped aside like a hare, just in time to save himself. At the same instant two of the other wolves dashed in and snapped at the bear's. The bear, however, had anticipated this very move, and his charge upon the leader had been merely a feint. Doubling back just as his rash assailants reached him, he caught one of them full on the side, ripping him open and hurling him twenty feet away. The rest of the pack, to whom nothing in the way of meat came amiss, promptly fell upon the corpse, and devoured it; and the


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 bear, happy to see them so well occupied, made haste to take the edge off his own hunger. Then he proceeded laboriously to drag the carcass up among the rocks, where he could conclude his meal more comfortably.

And the wolves, grown less ravenous and more discreet, followed him at a prudent distance, remembering that when he had well gorged himself, he would go away somewhere to sleep, leaving them to feast at their ease.

About this time, though the sun shone as benignantly as ever, a certain restlessness began to show itself in the basking herd of walrus. As if with one simultaneous impulse, they all began to grunt, swaying upon their flippers. Ah-wook forthwith forgot his lazy interest in the great white bear and the wolves. Whirling his gigantic bulk about, he floundered through the herd to the farther edge of the floe, and plunged, with a resounding splash, into the quiet green sea. In hot haste the whole herd followed him. For perhaps a minute the still air was loud with the heavy splashings. Then every dark form vanished, while the water heaved and creamed along the edges of the ice. The feeding-time of the walrus had arrived.

This little bay, as I have said, was comparatively shallow, and its bottom, for the most part, of rich deep mud, ribbed with flat ledges which the


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 tide-wash kept scoured. It was a fruitful breeding place for huge, coarse clams and mussels, and innumerable crustaceans large and small. In fact, it was swarming with shoal-water life, and hence was an ideal pasturage for the herds of the walrus. Scattered all over the teeming bottom, the hungry monsters grubbed up the mud with their tusks, or with the same efficient weapons raked the rockloving shellfish from the ledges, rarely troubling to crush the hard morsels between their irresistible jaws, but preferring to gulp them down whole, shell and all. And if they swallowed quantities of mud and small stones at the same time, that did not trouble either their undiscriminating palates or their incomparably hardy stomachs. Above them, as they fed, the sunlight glimmered down greenly through the tranquil tide; and the silver-bellied cod and hake and pollock, singly or in shoals, darted hither and thither in confusion, while the fat and sluggish flat-fish—plaice and flounder and fluke—disturbed in their feeding on the mud, flounced up indignantly and glided off to serener pasturage.

Suddenly among the bewildered shoals of cod and pollock appeared a gleaming and terrible shape before which they all scattered like plover before a goshawk. Some sixteen or seventeen feet in length, slender and sinister, and with a keen lance about two feet long standing straight


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 out from its pointed nose, it came soundlessly and with appalling swiftness from out of the great deeps. It paid no attention to the panic-stricken fish. It hung poised for a second or two above the unsuspecting walrus herd, staring down upon them with round, blazing eyes as hard as glass. Then, having selected as the most manageable prey a very young calf which clung close to the mother's side as she nosed in the mud, it gave one screwlike sweep of its mighty tail, shot downward, and drove its sword clean through the youngling's tender body, cleaving its heart.

Ordinarily, the tactics of the giant swordfish would have been to bear away the victim on his sword, to be stabbed to fragments and devoured comfortably at a distance from the herd. But in this case, the fatal thrust having been delivered from above, the prize was not impaled in such a position as to be carried off conveniently. The slayer, therefore, withdrew his weapon, backed away a few yards at a lower level, and with a short but irresistible rush transfixed the prize once more, this time through the flank, in the same movement lifting it several feet clear of the bottom.

The outraged mother, bewildered for a moment, now reared herself directly in the slayer's path, frantic and dangerous. The great fish, his sword burdened and useless, was compelled to back away


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 and change his course. And at this instant Ah-wook, as nimble in the water as a seal, took a hand in the murderous game. His presence, close at hand, had been ignored by the overconfident swordfish, who expected no interference except from the mother of his victim. As he swerved aside, somewhat heavily by reason of the burden upon his sword, a colossal black bulk suddenly overshadowed him, and two long tusks, piercing him through the middle of the back, crushed him down irresistibly upon the bottom.

Although the great swordfish was a good four hundred pounds of corded muscle and galvanic nervous energy, he was no match for the mighty bull walrus, whose weight was over a ton and whose cunning far outclassed his own. Nevertheless his gigantic convulsions, and the paroxysmal lashings of his tremendous tail, enabled him to bear his captor along, hither and thither among the astonished herd, plowing deep furrows in the mud. But not all his frantic writhings could shake loose the grip of those inexorable tusks or lighten the crushing, suffocating pressure upon his back. And all the time Ah-wook—who nursed a special grudge against the swordfish tribe by reason of a gnarled and ancient scar along his flank—kept boring down inexorably with all his weight, and rending and grinding within the body of his adversary. The mud was churned up, and the green


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 tide, for fathoms all about the titanic contest, boiled to the surface, brown and frothy and bloodstreaked.

Then on a sudden, his backbone wrenched apart, the swordfish ceased to struggle and lay limp.

For a few seconds more Ah-wook continued to shake him as a terrier shakes a rat, jerking the body about savagely as if to glut his vengea ice to the full. Then, his labouring lungs warning him that it was time to take breath, he withdrew his tusks and shot up to the surface. Here he lay floating for a minute or two, deeply drinking in the vital air; and presently the water all about him was dotted with the staring heads of his followers. Next, floating belly upward, appeared the long, mangled body of the swordfish, the calf still firmly impaled upon its sword. Ah-wook grunted scornfully at the sight, raised himself high in the water to glare about him as if in challenge to other adversaries, and at length led the way in triumph back to the floe, confirmed in his kingship both by sea and by land.


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wide river, gone shallow in the midsummer heats, ran sweetly under the starlight, babbling among its long s-and-bars and chafing with a soft roar against the ragged, un-covered ledges. The steep and lofty shores, at this point some four hundred yards apart, were black with forest to their crests. From a still pool close inshore sounded sharply the splash of a leaping salmon.

Presently from behind a dark promontory about a mile downstream came a muffled, rhythmic, throbbing noise, accompanied, as it grew louder, by a heavy splashing. A few moments more and a white steamboat, her flat sides dotted with lights from the cabin windows, rounded into view. She was a stern-wheeler—in river parlance a "wheelbarrow boat"—propelled by a single huge paddle-wheel thrust out behind her stern. Flat-bottomed like a scow and of amazingly light draught, she drew so little water that the river men used to declare she would need only a heavy dew to enable her to navigate across the meadows. Driving her way doggedly upwards against the


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 stiff current, she puffed and grunted like some gigantic animal, and red sparks from her woodfed furnace streamed from the top of her lean black funnel. Her captain was driving her at top speed, because the river was falling so rapidly that he feared lest he might get hung up for lack of water in the channel before reaching his destination, which was yet a good day's journey distant.

In the long, lamp-lit cabin upstairs the few rough-clad passengers were smoking and playing cards, or dozing as well as they could on the stiff chairs, while a buxom, red-haired girl heroically strummed Moody-and-Sankey hymn-tunes on an unmelodious piano. There was no sleeping accommodation; for the old Forest Queen, except under stress of circumstances like the present, was wont to do all her journeying by daylight. But the passengers were not grumbling. All they wanted was to arrive—not to be hung up, by the shrinking of the stream, on some s-and-bar in the heart of the wilderness. They knew the anxious captain was making good time, and they were all in good temper.

All, with one exception. Down on the lower deck, in the wide space between the furnace door and the bows, among piled freight—boxes of smoked herring, kegs of molasses, cases of miscellaneous groceries, dry-goods, and hardware


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 was tethered an immense, long-haired, greyish brown goat, with an imposing beard hanging from his throat and a pair of formidable horns sweeping back from his massive forehead. This dignified-looking passenger was in a very bad temper indeed. His wishes had not been consulted in regard to the journey he was making. He had been hustled on board by the lusty deck hands with cheerful and irresistible familiarity; and he had had no chance whatever to avenge himself upon any one of them. He stood glowering, with wrath in his heart and scorn in his great, yellow, supercilious eyes, at the sweating firemen and the roaring, blazing mouth of the furnace beneath the boiler. The glare and the windy roar of the red flame, the loud pulsing of the wheel, the ceaseless vibration of the straining boat, all the inexplicable strangeness of the situation into which he had been so rudely thrust, filled him with uneasiness, indeed, but had no power to shake his defiant spirit.

The captain of the Forest Queen was a skilled river man, his intrepidity wisely tempered with discretion. But long immunity from accident had produced the usual effect. The ancient proverb of the pitcher that goes too often to the well is apt to justify itself at last. Confident in his boat and in his skill, absorbed in his determination to beat the river, he forgot how the drought had


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 been drying up not only the river but the long-seasoned upper timber of the Forest Queen; he forgot the sparks which his over-driven furnace was vomiting from the funnel. One after another they caught, and clung, and gathered fresh vitality, and began to gnaw their way along the cracks in the parched timbers of the cabin roof. Thin, vicious red lines began to show themselves. A shift in the channel, a slight veering in the course of the boat, brought a draft along the cracks, and the furtive red lines leaped to life. Then, with startling suddenness, the whole after section of the cabin roof burst into flames.

Pandemonium broke loose. The shrill, tinthroated bell rang frantic signals. The hoarse steam whistle hooted and hooted. The one, inadequate length of fire hose—used for flushing the lower deck—was dragged aloft with shouts, and its puny stream spurted into the struggle. Brimming and splashing deck buckets were passed up the companion and emptied futilely at the mocking monster which seemed as if it had just swooped aboard out of space to overwhelm and devour its prey.

The battle was lost even before it was well begun. The old boat was as dry as a match box, and blazed riotously. The passengers in the cabin snatched up their belongings, flung themselves down the companion, and crowded forward as


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 far as possible from the already scorching heat. The captain, seeing his boat was doomed, headed her about and ran her up as high as he could upon a long sandspit which jutted out from the shore a couple of hundred yards below. He would at least save something of the cargo.

The passengers, with their grips and bundles, jumped from the bows to dry land, ran up the slope, and stood to watch the conflagration. The crew began feverishly tumbling the freight overboard and dragging it up the sand. The goat, who was by this time beginning to get alarmed, stamped impatiently and gave utterance to a loud bleat. One of the deck hands, crying, "We ain't goin' to forgit you, Bill, you old b!" ran up, seized him by one horn, slipped the tether from his collar, dragged him to the side, and gave him a friendly kick on the rump to hasten his departure.

Bill sprang into the air, landed lightly on the sand whipped about like a flash, with lowered head, to avenge the insult to his dignity. But his rude rescuer was still on board, far out of his reach. Another of the deck hands, however, was close by, with his back to him, just stooping to lift a bale of blankets. The mark was irresistible. With a snort of indignation Bill launched himself, struck the unsuspecting man fair on the broad seat of his breeches, and sent


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 him sprawling headlong into a pile of boxes. The man picked himself up with a volley of remarks which would make the printer's ink blush red, and glared around for some weapon with which to punish his assailant. But Bill, his honour satisfied, was already far up the sandspit, capering derisively. At the edge of the bushes which lined the bank he turned and stared for a few moments at the soaring and roaring flames which filled the river valley with wild light, at the wide water rippling gold and scarlet past the already half consumed wreck of his late prison, at the dense brown and orange clouds of smoke billowing away slowly on the light night airs, at the confusion and turmoil on the sandspit. He had never seen anything in the least like it before. He did not understand it. And it all annoyed him extremely. With a toss of the head he bounded through the screen of bushes, and made off, prancing and leaping freakishly, into the black shadows of the woods.

For the moment, Bill had but one idea in his head, which was to put the scene of his discomfitures and indignations as far behind him as possible. From the burning boat there was light enough for him to see his way pretty clearly. At this point the precipitous ridge which skirted


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 the river was cleft by a steep, rocky, wooded valley leading up into the wild solitudes behind the ridge. A tiny thread of a stream, now gathering into still pools, now tinkling silverly over the ledges in thin films of cascades, meandered down to lose itself in the river just below the sandspit. Sure-footed and light of tread like all his tribe, and exulting in his freedom, Bill took by choice the most difficult portions of the always difficult path, leaping unerringly from rock to windfall, from ledge to slippery ledge, and balancing his great bulk of corded muscle as airily as a bird. As he ascended the way grew brighter, and the now shrinking fire once more came into view above the tree-tops behind him. Discontented at this, he hastened his flight; and soon, having traversed the saddle of the pass and lost the stream, he turned off sharply along a grassy glade, a half dried strip of swamp. A shoulder of the ridge behind him cut off all view or hint of the river valley, and he found himself swallowed up in the starlit, shadowy dark.

And now, at last, Bill began to feel the utter strangeness of his surroundings. The product of generations of civilization, he had few of the instincts of his wild ancestors left in his make-up, except for his proud independence and his impatience of restraint. He had no fear of the darkness—he had no apprehension that it might hide


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 unknown perils. But an unwonted sense of loneliness began to oppress him, and his ebullience of spirits died down. Moving noisily hither and thither, he cropped the wild grasses, and browsed, with interested curiosity, on the leaves and twigs of such of the bushes as appealed to his investigating nose. Having made a satisfying meal he pushed under some overhanging leafage and lay down, looking out upon the starlit glimmer of the glade, and calmly, ignorantly, turning his back upon whatever menace might lurk in the blackness of the forest.

As soon as he was quiet the vast silence seemed to grip him. He had never before been aware of such silence absolute, and it presently began to arouse within him a deep-buried ancestral instinct of vigilance. His great yellow eyes rolled watchfully from side to side, though he knew not why, as he was conscious of no dread. His nostrils opened wide, questioning the novel scents of the forest air. His ears began to turn slowly backwards and forwards, straining to catch some hint of sound that would relieve the intolerable stillness.

For a long ten minutes or so there came no such relief; for all the small, furtive life of the forest had been stilled apprehensively by the intrusion of this noisy, mysterious-looking stranger. The rule of the wild was "When in doubt don't


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 stir!" Then, in a little while, these creatures of short memory forgot their fears, forgot even the intruder's presence. The tiny feet of the woodmice once more scurried faintly among the dry spruce-needles; and a chorus of tiny squeaks proclaimed a disagreement over some captured moth or beetle. Bill's ears turned approvingly towards the sound, but his unpractised vision failed to make out the authors of it. The elusive noises stopped abruptly,—and a pair of small, sharply flaming eyes, set close together and near the ground, floated swiftly into view. They met Bill's wide-eyed, interested stare with savage defiance. Behind the eyes Bill presently made out the slim, lithe, snaky form of a weasel. Sensing the venomous hostility of the malevolent little prowler, he shook his horns and gave a loud snort of contempt. The weasel slipped away into the darkness as soundlessly as it had come, in search of a hunting-ground not pre-empted by this big mysterious stranger.

Not many moments later there came a light and muffled pitpat of leaping feet, and Bill saw three "snow-shoe" rabbits emerge into the glade. They sat up on their hind-quarters, ears erect, and stared about in every direction with their foolish bulging eyes. Then they fell to gambolling as light-heartedly as children, chasing and leaping over each other as if quite forgetful of the fact


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 that life, for them, was one incessant game of dodging death. As he watched their play, Bill began to feel more at home. He had seen rabbits—tame rabbits—before, lots of them; and though he had always hitherto regarded this tribe with toplofty indifference, he now felt distinctly friendly to them. They called up pleasant memories and cheered the solitude. He even had a fleeting impulse to jump up and prance and gambol with them; but his instinct warned him that if he tried it they would take alarm and vanish. He did not want them to go, so he kept quite still.

Then a startling thing happened,—startling even to such unroutable self-possession as Bill's. From the blackness of an alder-thicket just opposite, a shadowy shape, almost as big as Bill himself, shot into the air, with a harsh sound which seemed to paralyze the little players for an instant. In that instant one of them was struck down by a broad, keen-taloned paw. Its dying scream seemed to release its two companions from their trance of terror, and they bounded off into the woods.

The slayer, a big Canada lynx, almost as long in the body as Bill himself, but much slighter in build, lifted his round, tuft-eared snarling face and stood, with one paw on his prey, glaring about him triumphantly with moon-pale, coldly savage eyes. But he crouched again instantly, laying back his tufted ears and baring his long white fangs, as


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 he found himself looking into the large, inscrutable eyes of Bill, who had risen to his feet, gazing at him from beneath the branches.

Besides bitterly resenting the attack upon his little friends, the rabbits, Bill instinctively, on his own account, loathed the great lynx at sight. He had always had an antipathy to cats; and this, in his eyes, was just a gigantic and particularly objectionable cat.

For the fraction of a second the lynx stood his ground, ready to battle for his prey. Then the strangeness of the apparition, and of the manner of its attack, daunted him. He shrank back and sprang aside. But his delay had been a mistake. He was not quite quick enough. Bill's iron front caught him far back on the flank,—not, indeed, with full force, but with emphasis enough to send him sprawling. With a yowl of dismay he scrambled to his feet and fled ignominiously, the hairs on his stub of a tail standing out like a bottle-brush. Bears and wolves he knew; the antlered stag and moose-bull he understood; but Bill was a phenomenon he could not account for, and had no stomach to investigate.

Quite satisfied with his swift and easy victory, Bill had no thought of trying to follow it up. He stamped two or three times with his slim forehooves, as he stared after the enemy's flight, then he turned and sniffed inquiringly at the mangled


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 rabbit. The smell of the fresh blood struck a kind of horror to his heart. He drew back, snorting and shaking his head. The place grew suddenly distasteful to him. Then, forgetting his dignity, he went bounding away down the glade, deeper and deeper into the forest, till the unpleasant impression faded away as his veins ran warm with the effort. At length, somewhat breathless, and weary from his crowded experiences, he snuggled down against the foot of a mossy boulder and went comfortably to sleep.

In the chill of a pink and silvery dawn he woke up, sprang to his feet, and gazed about him at the unfamiliar scene. Dew lay thick on the grass and moss and leaves. White wisps of mist coiled thinly in the narrow open glades. Down the dim corridors between the tree-trunks, it was still grey dusk; but the high tops of the light green birches and the dark green firs and hemlocks were touched with rosy light. He fell to browsing contentedly; and when his appetite was satisfied he pushed on, urged partly by the innate curiosity of his race, partly by a craving for some place that might give him the sense of home. The freedom and solitude of the wilderness were all very well in their way, but the need of something different was bred in his very bones.

As he went he cropped a mouthful here and there, following his incorrigible habit of sampling


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 everything that was strange to him,—except toadstools. Of these he harboured an inherited suspicion. He would sniff at them, then stamp them to bits with every mark of hostility. Presently he noted the big grey papery globe of a wasps' nest, hanging from a branch just above his head. In that hour of numbing damp and chill not a wasp was stirring abroad. To Bill the nest looked like a ball of grey paper. Among other more or less edible things he rather liked paper. And he knew nothing about wasps. He reached up and took a good bite out of the conical bottom of the nest.

With a startled bleat of pain he spat out the fiery morsel, bucked about three feet into the air, and struck violently at his muzzle with one nimble forehoof. At the same moment half a dozen white-hot needle-points were jabbed into his nostrils. He heard, but gave no heed to, a sudden loud and vicious buzzing. Fortunately for him—the furious little "yellow-jackets" were too sluggish with the cold to be very active on their wings. Two or three more spasmodic leaps through the thick undergrowth bore him clear of their vengeance. But their scorching punishment he carried with him. For a few moments he rooted wildly in the damp moss. Then, bleating shrilly with rage and fear and torment, he went tearing through the wood till he chanced upon a little


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 pool where the water bubbled up ice-cold from its source in the heart of the hills. Into this he plunged his tortured muzzle up to the eyes, and somewhat eased the anguish.

Bill's flesh was healthy, and his system strongly resistant to such poisons as those of insects or snakes; so in a comparatively short time he was little the worse except for a tenderness which led him to choose only the most delicate provender. Somewhat later in the day he caught sight of another of those harmless-looking pale grey papery globes, hanging from a branch. He was just beginning to recover his customary disdainful mood and bearing; but his self-confidence vanished like a pricked bubble and he fled in a panic, not pausing till he had put a mile or more between himself and the dreadful object.

This experience, though bitter, was worth the price, for it saved him, on the following day, from a yet more bitter and disastrous one. As he wandered on through green-and-brown forest aisles, following his vague quest, he was suddenly confronted by a clumsy-looking pepper-and-salt coloured animal, squat and lumpy in build, and about the size of a very large rabbit. The creature had a short black face with a blunt nose and little bad-tempered eyes. At the sight of Bill it paused, its fur suddenly stood up all over till it looked twice its proper size, and its colour changed to a dirty


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 yellowish white with a blackish undertone. Then it came straight on, in its slow, heavy crawl, squeaking and gnashing its yellow teeth crossly, quite unimpressed by Bill's bulk and his imposing appearance. Had he been in his ordinary unchastened temper Bill would have resented this procedure at once. He would have promptly butted the presumptuous little stranger from his path. He would have got his face, his nose, his eyes, stuck full of deadly porcupine quills, so barbed as never to come out but to work their way steadily inwards. He would have gone staggering about in blind torment till death came mercifully to release him; and this chronicle of his adventures would have come to a melancholy end.

As it was, however, Bill was filled, at the moment, with a wholesome suspicion of what he did not understand. He certainly did not understand a creature which could grow to twice its size in the course of a second. He eyed it with curiosity, not unmingled with apprehension, till it was within two or three feet of him. Then he discreetly stepped aside. And the porcupine waddled slowly past, grunting and squeaking to itself, too indifferent, or too sluggish of wit, apparently, even to wonder what sort of being Bill might be.


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On the following evening, soon after sunset, Bill came out suddenly upon the bank of a small river, rippling and murmuring over its gravelly shoals. The wide sky was tender with a soft, violet light, and musical with the silver twang of the high-swooping night-hawks, hunting gnats in the quiet air above the tree-tops. Two or three early bats were already zigzagging erratically above the bright water, and the trout were leaping in the smoother reaches of the stream. To Bill this was a most comforting change from the gloom and stillness of the forest. The naked strip between the current and the bank,—now sand, now gravel, now naked, sun-warmed rock—was pleasant to his feet. He sauntered on hopefully downstream, browsing along the bushy edge of the bank as he went, till darkness had fallen and the sky grown thick with stars. Then he settled himself for the night on a patch of warm sand beneath the projecting roots of a half undermined maple, more content than he had been at any time since he had been so rudely dragged from his subservient flock and his old, familiar pasture.

The next morning about sunrise, while the mists were afloat upon the water, Bill rounded a leafy point and came upon a sight which thrilled his lonely heart deliciously. A slim young doe, light


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 limbed and stepping daintily, came down to the river's edge to drink. In colour she was of a delicate, ruddy fawn, with cream-white belly, and a clean white patch on her trim stern. Bill felt at once that there was some far-off kinship between her tribe and his; and however remote, he yearned to make the most of it. Holding his great head high, and approaching with delicate, mincing steps so as not to startle the fair stranger, he gave utterance to a harsh bleat, which he meant to be the very last word in caressing allurement. The doe jumped as she lifted her graceful head, and stood staring at Bill with wonder and question in her big dark, liquid eyes. She knew at once that he was not hostile; but he was an amazing apparition, and she was intensely curious. How ugly he seemed to her, with his coarse shaggy coat, long, bearded face, and stout horns sweeping back from his heavy brow! A puff of air brought his scent in her direction. Her fine muzzle wrinkled with distaste, and she sidled away a few paces. But her curiosity held her from flight.

His ardour stimulated by this coy withdrawal, Bill fell to curvetting and prancing, rearing on his hind legs, tossing his horns, showing off to the best of his powers as he drew nearer and nearer. He was careful not to be too hasty, though he was confident that his bold and virile charms could not fail of their effect. They were effective, indeed,


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 but by no means as he fancied. Not thus was the slim doe desirous to be wooed. She stood her ground till he was within a dozen paces of her. Then, her curiosity quite satisfied, she whisked about on her dainty, pointed hooves, gave a disdainful flirt of her little tail, and went bounding away up the bank and over the bushes in prodigious leaps that carried her twenty-five feet at a time.

With a bleat of piteous appeal Bill raced after her. But not for long. In a few seconds she had vanished utterly. With downcast mien Bill dropped the vain pursuit and moved heavily back to the river. Sore at heart he sniffed for a while at her light footprints. Then he continued his journey downstream. As he went, his disappointment gave way to anger. He had been scorned and flouted shamefully. Not so would his lordly advances have been treated by his admiring little flock in the old home pasture. His wrath at last gave way to homesickness, and he felt very sorry for himself. When, some hours later, a big fox, crossing his path, paused to stare at him with lively interest, he thought it was a yellow dog and trotted forwards playfully, anticipating a rough-and-ready game of tag. Such games,—none too amiable, indeed, but with small hurt to either side,—he had often indulged in with the dogs of his native village. The fox, however, whisked off up


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 the bank with a snarl and disappeared. Bill continued his journey morosely. In the wilderness nobody loved him. Was it possible that he had made a mistake in parting company with those impertinent but not unfriendly river men whom he had left beside the burning boat? For a moment he was tempted to turn back and look for them; but the impulse faded out as his attention was caught by the sudden shrill clamour of a squirrel showering abuse at him from a branch overhead. It was a familiar sound and he went on with more hope.

Late that evening it chanced that a vagabond Indian, poling his way up-river in his birch canoe from the far-off settlements, had landed, pulled up his light craft, and made camp just a few hundred yards below the spot where Bill, in a deep cleft in the bank, had settled himself for the night. This Indian, unlike most of the men of his shrewd breed, was rather a simple-minded rascal, shiftless and thieving, fuddled with drink when he could get it and always something of a butt both in his native village far upstream and in the settlements where he was wont to sell his baskets. It was strictly against the law to sell spirits to the Indians; but on this last visit "Poke," as he was called derisively, had found a dishonest trader, who had obligingly accepted all his basket money in return for a few bottles of fiery "Square Face."


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 Already mildly "oiled," though his task of poling against the stiff current had forced him to be moderate, Poke had now but one idea. This was to indulge himself, free from all distractions, in a blissful orgy of fire-water. The night was bland and clear. He had no need of a shelter. He did not trouble even to unload the canoe. Bringing ashore only his blanket, a hunk of bread, and two of his precious, square, black bottles of gin, he spread the blanket at the foot of a steep rock and hurriedly lighted his little camp-fire. Then, squatted beside the companionable blaze, with a grunt of luxurious anticipation he dug out the cork with his sheath-knife and took a generous draft of the raw liquor.

Alternately munching chunks of bread and drinking avidly from the black bottle, Poke was soon in a condition when the world seemed to him a glorious place. Cold, hunger, pain, toil, weariness were things which had never been and never more would be. Rocking himself slowly on his haunches and occasionally muttering quietly, he stared into the little fire, feeding it from time to time with dry sticks till his copper-coloured, foolishly grinning face glowed in the dancing of the flame.

Suddenly a sharp sound of footsteps on the gravel at the other side of the fire made him look up, stupidly enraged at the interruption. All he saw


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 was Bill's great horned and bearded head, with the big yellow eyes aglare in the firelight, gazing at him fixedly from around the corner of the rock. Never before had he seen such a head, such awful blazing eyes. But he had dreamed of something like it, after listening to the priest's description of the hell that awaited evil-doers. His fuddled brain leaped to the conclusion that this was none other than the Devil himself, come to snatch him off to eternal torment. With a yell of horror he sprang to his feet, hurled the bottle—now quite empty—at the dreadful vision, thrust off and fell into his canoe, and went paddling frantically downstream. It was not the direction he wished to go in, but it was the quickest path of flight.

Bill, who had come with the most friendly intentions, seeking human company and hospitality, had jumped back into the shadows with a startled snort as the bottle crashed loudly on the rock beside his head. He came forth again at once, however, stared after the fugitive for a moment, and then stepped around to examine the little fire and the abandoned blanket. Finding a crust of the bread left, he joyously devoured it. He seized the blanket and tried to toss it in the air; but as he Was standing upon it with his forefeet it resisted him. This excited and amused him, and he proceeded to have some fun with it, enjoying himself immensely.


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 The frightened Poke, daring at last to glance back over his shoulder, was horrified to see a black horned shape, looking to him as big as a horse, dancing diabolically about the fire, and flapping an awful, dusky wing. In his panic he threw overboard his last bottle, and it was months before he would taste another drop, or steal so much as a potato.

Tiring at last of his antics with the blanket and cheered by a feeling that he had once more come in contact with humanity, Bill lay down beside the rock and gazed at the dying fire until he fell asleep.

It was early in the following afternoon when Bill came upon the first signs of human habitation in the wilderness. Forced by a deep and still bayou, or backwater, to turn his steps far inland, he traversed a low ridge clothed with beech-trees, and saw before him a pleasant valley, with the roofs of a log cabin and a low barn showing in the distance. There were several wide patches of roughly tilled clearing, with blackened, half-burned stumps sticking up through the crops of potato and buckwheat. Immediately before him was a very crude but substantial snake-fence of brushwood and poles, enclosing a rugged pasture. And in that pasture was a sight that rejoiced his soul.

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 five sheep were feeding—two white ones and three black. These latter, called black by courtesy, were rather of a rusty brown, with black head and legs. Bill was acquainted with sheep, and had always recognized them, condescendingly, as humbler and uninteresting kin to the aristocratic tribe of the goats. But all the sheep he had seen hitherto had been white ones, very fat, and woolly, and futile. These three brown ewes, leggy and nimble, reminded him of his own light-footed flock, and his heart went out to them. But his experiences in this strange land had taught him caution. He was afraid that unless he should make his advances gently, these altogether desirable creatures might vanish, as the doe had done, and leave him again to his loneliness.

The sheep were pasturing at some distance to his right near a corner of the fence which was fairly overhung by dense forest. He would go over and try talking to them nicely through the fence before thrusting his company upon them in his usual swaggering way. He was quick to learn, was Bill, and this time he was not taking any risks. He moved as quietly, now, through the underbrush as if he had been born to it.

Bill had almost reached the point he was aiming at, when an appalling thing happened. One of the brown ewes was lying down, peacefully ruminating, quite close to the fence, and with her back to


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 it. Nothing was further from her simpie mind than any possible peril. Suddenly a great black shape seemed to drop over the fence just behind her and fall forward upon her. In the next instant, as she jumped to her feet with a terrified "baa-a-a," a mighty paw descended upon her and she sank down again, with her back broken. The shaggy bulk of her slaughterer almost hid her from view as his jaws fixed themselves greedily in her throat. The rest of the flock raced down the pasture with wild bleatings.

It required no previous knowledge of bears to inform Bill that this black monster would be a terrible, a deadly, antagonist. But his bold heart, almost bursting with rage, took no account of the odds. Already in his sight those ewes were his. With one magnificent bound, barely touching the top rail, he was over the fence. In the next he launched himself, head down. With all his weight and all his fury behind it, his iron front struck the bear in the most sensitive part of the flank, just behind the ribs.

With a gasping cough the bear, caught unprepared, rolled clear of his victim. He was dazed and breathless for a second; but before his amazing assailant could repeat the stroke he recovered himself. Crouched back on his haunches, his little furious eyes fixed upon the foe with the wariness of a trained boxer, he held one great iron-clawed


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 paw uplifted in readiness for a blow that should settle the fight.

Bill was a crafty fighter as well as a daring one. He had danced back some paces, for room to gather momentum. He was just on the point of charging again when he grasped his adversary's tactics. He had seen what that mighty paw could do. He leaped to one side, and dashed in from another angle. But the bear whirled nimbly on his haunches to confront him again; and he swerved just in time to evade the pile-driver stroke. It was, in fact, a close shave.

And now Bill began a maneuvre which his great adversary found most annoying. He danced around the bear, thrusting and feinting, and ever circling, ever challenging; while the bear was kept turning, turning, turning on his haunches till fairly beside himself with rage. At last he made a lightning rush, hoping to end the matter. But his elusive foe was beyond reach in an instant, as swiftly and lightly as if blown by the wind of his rush. With a savage growl he sprang back to seize again the carcass of his victim. Just as he reached it, something like the fall of a hillside struck him full on the rump, and propelled him clean over it. He had made a mistake in turning his back on Bill, even for a second. There was nothing for him to do but crouch on his haunches again, and face once more his ever-mocking, ever-circling opponent.


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 The remaining ewes, meanwhile, somewhat recovered from their panic, were standing huddled together at a discreet distance, watching the battle with awe. It was plain, even to their somewhat limited perceptions, that the bearded and prancing stranger was their champion—a champion even so bold as to defy a bear. Strange as he was, their simple souls admired him.

At this juncture of affairs a loud and very angry shouting turned all eyes—even those of the bear and Bill—towards the other side of the field. A long-legged man in grey homespuns, bareheaded, and swinging an axe, came into view over the curve of the hill. He had been working in the field below the pasture, and had seen the sheep running wildly. As he raced with long strides over the hillocks, his appearance and his language struck panic to the heart of the bear. That sagacious beast knew Man. He had no wish to face a man alone, still less a man plus Bill. He made a wild dash for the fence. Just as he was going over it,—the top rail breaking under his weight,—Bill caught him again like a catapult, low down in the stern, between the thighs,—a devastating blow. With a squeal he went over, landing on his snout, and fled away through the thickets with no more dignity than a scared rabbit.

The tall man stopped beside the body of the ewe and stood leaning on his axe. He was indig-


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 nant and sore at the destruction of his beast; but his sporting spirit was more interested in Bill.

"Some goat!" he remarked with admiring emphasis. "Some scrapper! Say, old son, I wish we'd had you with us over in France."

Bill, immensely pleased with himself, but also pleased with the man's voice, so obviously friendly, came prancing towards him, half expecting a carrot or a lump of sugar as a reward for his performance. Seeing that no titbit was forthcoming, he paused irresolutely.

"Shoo!" said the man. "Buzz off now, son, and join the ladies. See where they're waitin' for yeh over there. I'll see to this poor bit of mutton."

Bill's eyes and thoughts were already turning in that direction, and just as if he had understood the man's words, he trotted over to join the huddled ewes. Uneasy at his strange appearance, they shifted and shrank a little; but he approached so gently, so diffidently, that their fears were soon allayed. A moment more and he was among them, rubbing noses with each in turn. Having thus accepted his presence, the ewes placidly fell to pasturing again, as if nothing unusual had happened. But Bill, for a long while too happy to feed, kept moving about the flock, from time to time shaking his horns at the forest as if defying all its perils to trespass on his new kingdom.


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white under the flooding spring moonlight, the sheep lay contentedly ruminating amid the old stumps and close-bitten hillocks of the upland pasture. A huge black-and-tan dog—long-limbed, deep-chested, with longish, slightly waving coat and richly feathered tail, like a collie's—came trotting up towards them with a business-like air. At a distance of some ten paces he paused, and, contemplatively waving his tail, cast a keen glance over the flock.

The nearest ewes stopped chewing and eyed him with a mild disfavour, prepared to rise and move in among their fellows if he should come any closer. The rest of the flock appeared to ignore him. They did not fear him. In fact, his presence gave them a sense of added security, there in this wide, naked pasture field with the blackness of the ancient, untamed forest crowding close along the frail barrier of zigzag rail fence. In a dim way they realized that he was responsible for their safety—that he was their protector


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 from the perils which prowled or lurked in the forest shades.

Of his powers as a protector they had a keen appreciation; but in those very powers their deeper instincts recognized something from which they shrank uneasily. Ancestral memories, formless and infinitely remote, kept them on their guard, and their noncommittal eyes, lazily half closed, followed his every movement as long as he was near them.

Apparently satisfied with his inspection the big dog skirted the flock at a brisk trot and ran on to the fence. Here he sniffed along the rails for perhaps a couple of hundred yards in each direction, occasionally thrusting his muzzle through them between the roughly split poles, and sampling the forest smells with his discriminating nostrils.

The soft night wind drew outwards from the forest, across the pasture, and brought him a mixture of savours, all of which his delicate sense sorted out unerringly. He smelled the balsamy tang of spruce and fir, the faint wintergreen breath of the birches, the harsh, chill earthiness from a near-by patch of alder swamp. He caught the almost imperceptible scent of a hare, passing at some distance behind the trees, and cocked an ear with interest as it was followed, almost immediately, by the pungent musk of a fox.


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 Then his nose wrinkled at the taint of a passing weasel.

There was no sign or hint anywhere of danger to the flock. He was not anticipating danger, indeed; for the bears and lynxes, at this season of plenty and good hunting, were not hanging about the neighbourhood of the settlements and courting trouble with the quick-shooting backwoods farmers.

Having thus fulfilled his duty towards his master's flocks, Bran—for that was the big dog's name—continued on along the fence, absorbed in his own private affairs. He was smelling for rabbits, or weasels, or ground squirrels, or any creature alive and active—skunks and porcupines alone strictly barred—which might afford him some sport and ease a certain restless craving that was tormenting him.

He had gone but a few yards when he picked up the fresh trail of a rabbit. Bounding forwards eagerly, he dashed around a dense clump of juniper—and almost collided with a ewe who was standing over her lamb.

On the instant, the dauntless mother charged at him furiously, with lowered head—so swiftly that, as he sprang aside, she caught him a savage butt on the hind-quarters, nearly knocking him over. With a snarl of surprise and wrath he leaped out of reach; and the ewe, returning to her


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 little one, fell to licking it anxiously. It was just old enough to stand upon its awkward, trembling legs; and she stood over it, alternately coaxing it to nurse and stamping defiantly at Bran.

As for Bran, his first impulse had been to spring upon his assailant; but his deepest instinct forbade him. To harm her was unlawful. She was part of his master's property, and, as such, sacred. At a discreet distance—the rabbit trail forgotten—he sat up on his haunches and regarded her.

In themselves, the ewe and her ridiculous offspring were of less than no concern to him; but his deep sense of responsibility for his master's property made him uneasy at seeing her so close to the fence and the forest. He knew that sheep were fools, of course; but she might have had sense enough to establish her nursery somewhere behind a big stump well down in the pasture, where her helpless young would not be a temptation to every forest marauder.

He would have liked to drive them both back to the flock, or at least to a safe distance from the fence; but he knew that the foolish and excited mother was in no mood to take a hint. Further, it was obvious that the lamb was as yet too feeble to walk. Unable to make up his mind what to do,


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 he turned his back upon the problem, and sat watching the flock, his fine tail spread, slack and dejected, upon the dewy turf.

Obviously a mongrel, Bran was, like many mongrels, an altogether magnificent specimen of doghood. Fine breeds had gone to his making. His mother had been a big Yukon sledge dog, part Husky, part Newfoundland, with a strong strain of the wolf quite near the surface. His father had been a cross between collie and Airedale; and an expert might have picked out marks of all these strong strains in his physical make-up, although the blend was perfect, unless, perhaps, for some contrast between the intelligent, benevolent breadth of his skull above the eyes and the wolfish rake of his long, powerful jaws.

Heredity plays some queer tricks, no less in dogs than in men; and in Bran's temperament the distinctive traits of his varied ancestry lay in tangled and often sharply conflicting strands, instead of being wrought into a harmonious whole.

Now, balked in his hunting and in a distinctly bad humour, he revealed by the expression in his eyes as he sat watching the peaceful flock among the moonlit hillocks and stumps, a mood that grew to be something far from benevolent. Little by little his lips drew back, disclosing his long, white fangs.

Stealthily, almost imperceptibly to himself, a


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 savage impulse hegan to creep up, itching, into his brain. He felt presently a fierce craving to dash down among the silly, comfortable flock, and scatter them—to see them fleeing in wild terror before him—to slash at their tender, woolly throats—to feel the gush of their hot sweet blood upon his tongue. Even so would that ancestral timber wolf have felt, watching, from behind a bush in the Yukon wilds, the approach of an unsuspecting little herd of caribou.

But Bran never moved. A more dominant strain in his temperament woke up, and called him sharply to his senses. His fangs vanished from view. The greenish fire faded from his eyes. A sense of shame chilled his spirit. With a guilty air he rose and turned to trot back to the farm-yard, his impulse to slaughter even rabbits quite extinguished for the moment.

He had not gone far, however, on his homeward journey, when he was surprised to hear from behind him that dull, pattering rush which is the unmistakable sound of a flock of sheep stampeding. His flock, so quiet but a half minute before, were tearing across the pasture in wild panic, now scattering hither and thither in small bunches, now closing again into a huddled mob as they ran,


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 only to be scattered apart again instantly, as if by an explosion in their midst.

In the trail of the flight he saw two sheep down on their sides, kicking feebly. In the broad white flood of the moonlight he saw clearly that their throats were torn out. He ran towards them, but, for the moment, he ran slowly, in bewilderment and indecision. The scene was just his own savage dream of five minutes back come true, and his conscience shook him.

Then he saw the slayer—a tall, slender, bluish grey dog, a half-breed greyhound from the next settlement, miles away on the other side of the ridge. The stranger was just emerging from the confusion, having succeeded in cutting out an unhappy ewe and heading off her frantic efforts to rejoin her fellows.

On the instant Bran's perceptions cleared. The thick mane along his neck lifted with rage, and a deep growl rumbled in his throat, as he launched himself at top speed across the hillocks. The grey marauder was too much engrossed to see the approaching peril. He was delaying his victim's fate, heading her off ever farther from the flock, playing with her anguish of terror as a cat plays with a mouse.

At length, tiring of this play, and fearful lest the rest of the flock should escape him, he sprang in, with the sure aim of the practised killer. The


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 helpless ewe gave one shrill bleat of despair. Then her throat was torn open, and she went down beneath her slayer—just as Bran landed upon them like a thunderbolt.

The black-and-tan dog felt a gush of hot blood in his face and nostrils; and then his long jaws closed inexorably upon the side of the grey beast's throat as he jerked him off his prey.

It was in no sense a fight, this that followed. Bran, the heavier and stronger as well as the more savage, had secured the one perfect, absolutely fatal grip. His opponent could do nothing but struggle impotently, with choked gasping and gurglings, striving to keep his feet while Bran worried him like a rat. In half a minute he was down, all four feet in the air, curled together and pawing convulsively; and then in a few seconds his body straightened out and fell slack.

For a little while, with fiercer growls, Bran continued to worry the unresisting form. Then, scornfully dropping it from his jaws, he lifted his blood-stained head and glanced about him keenly. Except for the three slaughtered ewes, the flock was all together, huddled in a compact, trembling white mass at the farther side of the pasture, as far as possible from the forest and its terrors.

Feeling that he had fulfilled his duty to the utmost, Bran turned about and with his hind paws


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 contemptuously kicked a few scraps of turf over his victim. Then he trotted home to the farm-yard, crept into his kennel, and settled himself to sleep.

It was not out of love for his master, by any means, that Bran was so careful to guard that master's property. It was simply a fundamental article of the code which he inherited from the Newfoundland and collie side of his ancestry. Ben Parsons, the big, red-faced, hard-eyed farmer, was his master. To Ben Parsons he owed his food, his shelter and therefore his loyal service. That was enough for Bran.

There was no question of love, or even of the most temperate liking. Ben Parsons was not one to inspire, or to desire, anything approaching affection in man or beast. All the stock on his farm feared and distrusted him, in spite of the fact that they were in the main well treated. He had too clear an understanding of his own interests not to know that good treatment secured him good value. From his hired help he got fair service, for which he gave fair pay in wage and keep, and so he prospered; but no one ever stayed long in his employ.

From Bran he got obedience, but no servility. To him the great inscrutable-eyed, huge-eating


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 dog was well worth his rations and the ten dollars that Ben had paid for him as a puppy, for the protection which he afforded to the farm.

It was towards noon when Parsons tramped up to the sheep pasture to see if all was well with his flock, a bunch of high-grade southdowns in which he took much pride. Bran accompanied him, not trotting at his heels, but ranging about with an air of responsibility.

The flock was pasturing—contentedly, for sheep have short memories—near the home fence of the pasture. The ewe which had given birth to her lamb the night before had rejoined the flock with her gawky offspring; but the owner's eye was quick to notice that three were missing. He glanced about the field.

"Seek 'em!" he said sharply.

Bran pricked up his ears, eyed Parsons inquiringly for a moment, then led him straight to the little hollow behind a big grey stump where one of the victims was lying.

To Parsons the sight of the torn throat was instant evidence that here was the work of that most hated of marauders, a sheep-killing dog. There could be no doubt as to who was the culprit. Bran was the only big dog in the whole settlement, the only dog with dangerous blood in his veins.

He turned and looked at Bran, a deadly rage


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 seething in his heart and gleaming from his steelhard eyes. Bran, on the other side of the carcass, sniffed at it for a moment, and growled and bared his fangs as he thought of the other dog.

Had Ben Parsons had his gun with him, Bran's fate would have been settled on the spot; but he had not even a stick. His big fingers clenched viciously, but he was no fool. He was not going to tackle a mighty beast like Bran naked-handed. He controlled himself, and planned vengeance later—a safe vengeance. Bran should be disabled by a well-placed shot, and then beaten to death, without haste. The matter could wait.

Bran looked up and met his master's eyes with the confident gaze of a commending conscience; but as he sensed the hate, the deadly purpose, in those cold blue eyes, his own underwent a change, and an angry green light flickered in their depths.

But habit, training, the master instinct, conquered him. He turned and trotted straight to the other victim. Parsons followed, and gave but one look, icy now with the rage that was forced to bide its time. Hardly pausing, Bran led him on to the third victim, with the torn grey body of his slayer lying stretched out beside it. With a gesture of unutterable scorn, Bran kicked some dirt upon the corpse, then moved off a few paces, sat up


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 7. When the hands are laid on, the Holy Ghost will enter.

Baptism, unction with chrism, repentance, communion sanctify man and sanctify him for ever, independently of the spiritual condition of the priest and of him who receives the sacrament; if only everything is in proper order, and there is no cause for cassation.

In these manipulations lies that means for salvation which God has invented. He who believes that he is sanctified and purified, and will receive eternal life, is actually sanctified and purified and will receive eternal life. All those who believe in that will receive their retribution, at first a private retribution, soon after death, and later a general one, after the end of the world. The private retribution will consist in this, that they will be glorified in heaven and on earth. On earth their relics and images will be honoured with incense and tapers, and in heaven they will be with Christ in glory. But before attaining that, they will pass through aerial spaces, where they will be stopped and questioned by angels and devils, who will contend with each other on their account, and those for whom the defence of the angels shall be stronger than the accusation of the devils will go to Paradise, and those whom the devils shall win will go to eternal torment, into hell.

The righteous, those who will go to Paradise, will there settle in various places, and those who shall be nearer to the Trinity may there, in heaven, pray for us to God, and so we must here worship their relics, their garments, and their images. These objects do miracles, and it is necessary to pray to God near these objects, and then the saints will intercede for us before God. The sinners, all the heretics, the unbaptized, the unbelievers, those who have. not received their communion, will go to hell, but they will be there in different places, according to the degree of their guilt, and there they will be to the end of the world.


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 on his haunches and glared at his master with an expression of smouldering hostility.

Ben Parsons stared down upon that gaunt and long-jawed corpse, so terribly mauled, and understood the whole situation. There was no spark of generous warmth in his make-up. Even while congratulating himself that he had not perpetrated the folly of killing such a valuable dog as Bran, he nursed a certain grudge against him for not having intervened more promptly. He dwelt more on the three sheep slain than on the rest of the flock saved.

He set off for the stables, to get a horse and drag, in order to haul the carcasses home—the sheep to be skinned, the dog as evidence in his claim for damages. As he went, he whistled Bran to follow him; but the black-and-tan, apparently, failed to hear the summons. He was already far up the pasture, sniffing along beside the fence for the scent of a rabbit. He had no use for Ben Parsons at the moment.

That same night just before moonrise, Bran came forth from his kennel and stood surveying the wide, shadowy farm-yard, the two big, square barns black against the glimmering sky; the long, low, open-fronted shed for wood and carts; the


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 lean, white-painted frame house; the lamp-lit kitchen window close shut against the sweet and mild spring air.

Conflicting impulses warred sharply in his blood. For all the comfortable scene he felt a warm affection—a certain sense of proprietorship, almost, because he was there to guard it from the unknown perils of the night. He heard the two heavy bay draft horses pawing gently as they nosed the fodder in their mangers. They were Bran's friends, and his heart went out to them. He heard the soft lowing of one of the cows in the home pasture behind the shed. He liked the cattle—dull, to be sure, but rather amiable!

In his veins, however, there was stirring a fever that would not be quenched. Into his mouth came again the thrilling taste of that gush of hot blood from the ewe's torn throat as he had closed with her slayer. He licked his lips and gave an uneasy whine.

At that moment the heavy figure of Ben Parsons, pipe in mouth, appeared between the window and the lamp, gazing out into the dusk. Bran growled softly, with sudden aversion, at the sight; and the wolf strain triumphed. He trotted off towards the forest, athirst to hunt something, to kill something, if only a rabbit. In reality he craved a quarry that would struggle, that would resist, that he could slake his blood lust upon. If


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 only he might strike the trail of one of those splendid red deer which he had occasionally seen staring over the pasture fence!

His way to the forest led him up through the sheep pasture. The moon was just rising, red and distorted, through the jagged black tops of the fir trees on the ridge, casting long, sinister shadows across the hillocks. The sheep were lying down. He merely glanced at them in passing, for just now he had no mind to look after their protection.

In that moment the picture of the long-limbed grey slayer, as he scattered and tore the flock in the ecstasy of the chase, flashed across Bran's memory. His jaws slavered with a gust of horrid sympathy and understanding. He realized at last that it was sheep he wanted to kill; but not, assuredly not, these sheep! These sheep he had fought for. They were his own. Let any intruder touch them at his peril!

He trotted straight on, then broke into a run, leaped the fence, and plunged into the forest. His purpose was now clear to him, and nothing should turn him from it!

In the woods it was dark, except where the low moon sent long fingers of elfish radiancy between the black trunks and down the silent glades. To Bran, going swiftly and without any thought of secrecy or stealth, the solitude seemed empty of all life; for all the furtive creatures of the wild,


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 the savage and the timorous alike, hid themselves or froze into invisibility at the approach of this redoubtable intruder, who carried with him the added prestige of his alliance with man.

From time to time the scent of some tempting quarry would catch Bran's nostrils, but he was too fixed upon his purpose to be tempted. He raced on steadily, swishing through the young green brakes, crashing over the low blueberry bushes, skirting the denser thickets, threading the ancient trunks, leaping the occasional windfalls—his long and tireless gallop eating up the miles without effort. He topped the naked granite crest of the divide, spectral white in the pour of the new highfloating moon; and swept on down, through whispering groves of young birch and silver poplar, into the bosom of the white Ottanoonsis Valley.

Bran knew of a spacious sheep pasture on the lower slopes, where dwelt a white-fleeced flock which had lately been guarded by a certain tall, grey-blue dog, very swift of foot but fatally lacking in judgment. That dog had trespassed, and murdered, and met his deserts. To Bran it seemed that there would be a measure of justice, of retaliatory vengeance, in visiting the slayer's crime upon the slayer's own charges.

But Bran was prudent, for all the deadly lust in his veins. The old guardian was dead, indeed, but already a new one might have been appointed;


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 and he did not wish to be disturbed in the orgy he was promising himself. The new guardian of the flock, if there were one, must first be settled with. And then—and then—the ecstasy of the chase, the slaughter, and the slaking of his fiery thirst!

Through the rough rail fence he scrutinized, long and warily, the empty, bright expanse of the pasture, and the flock huddled, peacefully ruminating, beneath the glassy radiance in a remote corner of the field. Warily keeping ever in the shadows, he made a complete circuit of the field, a systematic reconnaissance.

It was about three o'clock in the morning. All was clear. All was quiet. The farmhouse and the farm-yard, hidden behind a windbreak of dense fir trees, gave no sign of life. In the single straggling street of the settlement village, half a mile below, not a window was lighted. There was not a sound on the air but the soft rush of the Ottanoonsis against the two piers of its wooden bridge.

With savage exultation Bran leaped the fence and dashed upon the flock.

For the moment he did no killing. He was not yet quite worked up to it. He craved the fierce excitement of the chase; and for a few seconds the flock, too astonished to be really frightened,


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 merely scattered sluggishly to avoid him. Two or three he nipped severely. Their sudden, piteous bleats were not to be misunderstood. Then swift panic seized the flock, and they ran, frantically.

The young lambs, left sprawling and bleating behind, Bran ignored. They were too petty game for him. Moreover, he would not have touched them in any case. His murder lust could not carry him so low as that. He pranced among them wildly for a moment, just to give the quarry a start, and then, with bared fangs and eyes flaming green, he tore in pursuit.

The first that he overtook, a heavy ewe, he sprang upon like a wolf. Her knees gave way beneath her, her outstretched muzzle buried itself in the damp turf—and Bran tore her throat out as he had seen the grey dog do.

Then a strange thing happened to him. With none of the ecstasy of gratifying a mad craving, the taste of his victim's blood shocked him back to sanity. It was like a douche of iced water in his face. He stqod rigid, frozen, and stared about him like one awaking from a tremendous dream. That old wolf forbear of his had at last been glutted. The mad fire faded from his eyes. His fine tail drooped slowly, and at last went fairly between his legs, as a sense of intolerable and unpardonable guilt swept over him.


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 With that sense of guilt came fear, which he had never known before. He had cut himself off from man. Retribution would await him everywhere. Never again could he return to the old farm. He whipped about and fled as if a pack of devils were at his heels.

Just at this moment, from behind the fir grove, appeared the farmer, the owner of the flock. Aroused, too late, by the vague but prolonged commotion in the sheep pasture, he had seized his gun—which hung ready loaded, on the kitchen wall—and run out to see what was the matter. Grasping the whole situation at a glance in that revealing white light, he took a hasty shot at the fleeing Bran.

It was not a good shot, fortunately. One of the big scattering pellets alone caught Bran, with a sting like a hot iron, on the side of the rump, just as he disappeared, with a startled yelp, over the top of the fence.

Speechless with indignation, the farmer strode across the field and surveyed the torn victim and the panic-stricken flock. The backwoods vocabulary is rich in varied and biting expletives; but words, here, were futile. He had recognized Bran, of course. He had already received an energetic demand from Ben Parsons for the price of three valuable sheep, their value being by no means understated in the claim.


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 "But I'll git even with Ben for this," he muttered at last; "him an' his dawg too, by God!"

Into the heart of the densest thicket he could find, trembling with shame and smarting from his surface wound, Bran slunk and hid himself. The spirit of two thousand generations of his ancestors—faithful friends of man since the dim ages of flint spearhead and cave-mouth fire—whispered scathingly in his conscience, upbraiding him for his crime.

He rolled and rooted in the wet moss and moist earth, striving to cleanse himself of the blood taint which now he loathed. The smart of his wound he hardly troubled to assuage, though from time to time he would lick at it despondently. What to do, or where to go, he had for the time no notion whatever. He had become that saddest and most aimless of four-foot creatures, a masterless dog.

At about half past eleven that same morning, in the shade of a wide-branched maple which overhung the river bank, Dave Stonor sat on a log smoking, and reading a shabby volume, while he waited for his kettle to boil. His compact little woodsman's fire was built between two stones close by, well in the shadow, that it might burn the better.


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 At the edge of the water, some twenty-five yards away—for the river had fallen, and there was a strip of gravelly beach between the wooded bank and the dimpling current—the prow of his loaded canoe was drawn up. Halting at the settlement that morning to buy milk and fresh bread, he had heard all about Bran's raid on the sheep pasture. Both Bran and Bran's owner, Ben Parsons, he had long known by reputation, though his house was nearly forty miles farther up the Ottanoonsis; for in the backwoods the minutest affairs of everyone are known and discussed for leagues about. It is almost as if each man's—and woman's—hairs were all numbered.

When, therefore, Dave Stonor saw a huge black-and-tan dog, with a splendid head, emerge cautiously from the bushes a little farther upstream, and slink, wtih a slight limp, down to the water's edge, he understood a great deal at once, and thought rapidly. He loved dogs. He knew Bran's pedigree. He had no liking for Ben Parsons. He had never owned a sheep. Bran's crime was more or less venial in his eyes.

The great dog drank greedily. Then he stood gazing across towards the opposite bank, as if making up his mind to swim over.

At this moment Dave Stonor intervened.

"Bran!" said he. "Come here!"

Bran jumped as if shot, turned his head to stare


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 at the speaker, and seemed uncertain whether to plunge into the stream or dash back into the cover of the woods. He stared inquiringly at the smallish, motionless figure seated on the log. He met a pair of greyish brown eyes, kindly but very masterful, very compelling, fixed steadily upon him.

"Come here, Bran! Come here, I tell you!" repeated Stonor, more sharply.

There was something in that voice of authority, so assured, yet so subtly sympathetic, that poured balm upon Bran's sick and desolate spirit. It gave him confidence. It seemed to restore him to his forfeited fellowship with man. He had never heard a voice like that before.

He came slowly towards Stonor, but he came very humbly, his ears drooping, his fine tail between his legs. He expected punishment, but he came gladly.

As he approached, Stonor tossed him a lump of cold meat. With an apologetic glance, Bran bolted it gratefully. Then he crept to the man's knees.

"Lay down, you bloody murderer!" commanded Stonor.

The dog obeyed at once, comforted to feel that he had acquired a master. That master placed a moccasined foot gently on his back, rubbed his broad, intelligent head, and pulled his ears with a decisive roughness. Then, dropping his eyes to


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 some lines in the well-thumbed volume that he had been reading, he remarked with the backwoods drawl:

"Must 'a' took a damn big conscience to make a coward of a dawg like you!"

In reply, Bran gave a small whimper of gratitude. He had been pardoned, and accepted.

By this time the kettle was boiling, but Dave Stonor paid no attention to it. He was thinking hard. He had tired of the backwoods. He had made some money by his work in the lumber camps, and saved it. He was on his way down to the city, a hundred and fifty miles away. There he intended to take train across the continent, and go north into the vast Yukon Territory prospecting for gold.

Bran's life was forfeit. It would be absurd to regard him any longer as the property of Ben Parsons—who was no good anyhow. Bran should not die. He should go to the Yukon with Stonor. What a leader for his dog team! And what a friend and companion in the great solitudes!

Dave Stonor got up briskly, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, emptied the kettle, and scattered and beat out the fire.

"We're a mite too nigh the settlement here," he remarked to Bran, who hung close at his heels. "We'll git right on, an' stop fur grub a few miles farther down."