t; clear into the shadow of the Arctic Circle, where the woodlands
gave way to the Weary wastes of barrens, there was no break, no tilled
fields or fisher's villages, only an occasional Indian encampment which
not even a wolf, running through the night, might find. His supply of
food would quickly be exhausted, fatigue would break his valiant spirit.
Ben planned an extensive search for his tracks as soon as the morning
light permitted him to see.

He missed the old man's comradeship with a deep and fervid longing. They
had come to count on each other, these past weeks. It wasn't alone
infinite gratitude that he felt for him now. The thing went too deep to
tell. Yet there was no use seeking for him to-night.

He turned to the wolf and dropped his hand upon the animal's shoulder.
Fenris started, then quivered in ecstasy. "I wish I had your nose,
to-night, old boy," Ben told him. "I'd find that old buddy of mine. I
wish I had your eyes to see in the dark, and your legs to run. Fenris,
do you know where he is?"

The wolf turned his wild eyes toward his master's face, as if he were
trying to understand.

XIV

Impelled by an urge within himself Ben suddenly knelt beside his lupine
friend. He could not understand the flood of emotion, the vague sense of
impending and dramatic events that stirred him to the quick. He only
knew, with a knowledge akin to inspiration, that in Fenris lay the
answer to his problem.

The moment was misted over with a quality of unreality. In the east rose
the moon, shining incredibly on the tree tops, showering down through
the little rifts in the withholding branches, enchanting the place as by
the weaving of a dream. The moon madness caught up Ben like a flame,
enthralling him as never before. He knew that white sphere of old. And
all at once he realized that here, at his knees, was one who knew it
too,--with a knowledge as ancient and as infinite as his own. Not for
nothing had the wolf breed lived their lives beneath it through the long
roll of the ages. Its rising and its setting had regulated the hunting
hours of the pack time without end; its beams had lighted the game
trails where the gray band had bayed after the deer; its light had
beheld, since the world was young, the rapturous mating of the old pack
leader and his female. Fenris too knew the moon-madness; but unlike Ben
he had a means of expression of the wonder and mystery and vague longing
that thrilled his wild heart. No