statue hewn out of stone levelling at him the fiery gleam of a solitary
eye. Until he saw that one eye, and not two, David did not breathe. Then
he gasped. The fish had fallen from his fingers. He stooped, picked it
up, and called softly:

"Baree!"

The dog was waiting for his voice. His one eye shifted, slanting like a
searchlight in the direction of the cabin, and turned swiftly back to
David. He whined, and David spoke to him again, calling his name, and
holding out the fish. For several moments Baree did not move, but eyed
him with the immobility of a half-blinded sphinx. Then, suddenly, he
dropped on his belly and began crawling toward him.

A spatter of moonlight fell upon them as David, crouching on his heels,
gave Baree the fish, holding for a moment to the tail of it while the
hungry beast seized its head between his powerful jaws with a grinding
crunch. The power of those jaws sent a little shiver through the man so
close to them. They were terrible--and splendid. A man's leg-bone would
have cracked between them like a pipe stem. And Baree, with that power
of death in his jaws, had a second time crept to him on his belly--not
fearingly, in the shadow of a club, but like a thing tamed into slavery
by a yearning adoration. It was a fact that seized upon David with a
peculiar hold. It built up between them--between this down-and-out beast
and a man fighting to find himself--a comradeship which perhaps only the
man and the beast could understand. Even as he devoured the fish Baree
kept his one eye on David, as though fearing he might lose him again if
he allowed his gaze to falter for an instant. The truculency and the
menace of that eye were gone. It was still bloodshot, still burned with
a reddish fire, and a great pity swept through David, as he thought of
the blows the club must have given. He noticed, then, that Baree was
making efforts to open the other eye; he saw the swollen lid flutter,
the muscle twitch. Impulsively he put out a hand. It fell unflinchingly
on Baree's head, and in an instant the crunching of the dog's jaw had
ceased, and he lay as if dead. David bent nearer. With the thumb and
forefinger of his other hand he gently lifted the swollen lid. It caused
a hurt. Baree whined softly. His great body trembled. His ivory fangs
clicked like the teeth of a man with ague. To his wolfish soul,
trembling in a body that had been condemned, beaten, clubbed almost to
the door of death, that hurt caused b