-old intoxication of the wilderness night. The hunting
hours were at hand. The creatures of claw and fang were coming into
their own. Fenris was shivering all over with those dark wood's passions
that not even the wisest naturalist can fully understand.

The air was tingling and electric, just as Ben recalled it a thousand
nights. Everywhere the hunters were leaving their lairs and starting
forth; grasses moved and brush-clumps rustled; blood was hot and savage
eyes were shot with fire. The mink, with unspeakable savagery, took the
trail of a snow-shoe rabbit beside the river-bed; a lynx with pale,
green, luminous eyes began his stalk of a tree squirrel, and various of
Fenris' fellows--pack brothers except for his own relations with
men--sang a song that was old when the mountains were new as they raced,
black in silhouette against the paling sky, along a snowy ridge.

Ben felt a quickening of his own senses, not knowing why. _His_ blood,
too, spurted inordinately fast through his veins, and his flesh seemed
to creep and tingle. There could be no surer proof of his legitimacy as
a son of the wilderness. The passions that maddened the first men, near
to the beasts they hunted in their ancient forests, returned in all
their fullness. The dusk deepened. The trail dimmed so that the eye had
to strain to follow it.

Complex and weird were the passions invoked to-night, but not even to
the gray wolf that is, beyond all other creatures, the embodiment of the
wilderness spirit, did there come such a madness, such a dark and
terrible lust, as that which cursed a certain wayfarer beyond the next
bend in the river. This was not one of the forest people, neither the
lynx, nor the hunting otter, nor even the venerable grizzly with whom no
one contests the trail. It was a human being,--a man of youthful body
and strong, deeply lined, yet savage face.

A close observer would have noticed the faintest tremor and shiver
throughout his body. His eyes were very bright, vivid even in the dying
day. He was deeply lost in his own mood, seemingly oblivious to the
whole world about him. He carried a rifle in his hands.

He was on his way to report to his chief; and just what would be
forthcoming he did not know. But if too much objection were raised and
affairs got to a crucial stage, he had nothing to fear. He had learned a
certain lesson--an avenue to triumph. It was strange that he had never
hit upon it before.

His blood was scalding