ht, darted across
the fast narrowing brightness of his path. But nothing followed. And
at last, after what seemed to him hours, he came out upon the open
pastures overlooking Burnt Brook Settlement. Here he ran on a little
way; and then, because the strain had been great, he sat down suddenly
upon a convenient stump and burst into a peal of laughter which must
have puzzled the wolves beyond measure.

After this, though well aware that the Gray Master's inexplicable
forbearance had saved him a battle which, for all his confidence,
might quite conceivably have gone against him, Kane's interest in the
mysterious beast was uncompromisingly hostile. He was bitter on
account of the dog. He felt that the great wolf had put a dishonor
upon him; and for a few days he was no longer the impartial student of
natural history, but the keen, primitive hunter with the blood-lust
hot in his veins. Then this mood passed, or, rather, underwent a
change. He decided that the Gray Master was, indeed, too individual a
beast to be just snuffed out, but, at the same time, far too dangerous
to be left at liberty.

And now all the thought and effort that could be spared from his daily
duties at the Cross-Roads were bent to the problem of capturing the
great wolf alive. He would be doing a service to the whole Quah-Davic
Valley. And he would have the pleasure of presenting the splendid
captive to his college town, at that time greatly interested in the
modest beginnings of a zoological garden which its citizens were
striving to inaugurate. It thrilled his fancy to imagine a tin placard
on the front of a cage in the little park, bearing the inscription--

CANIS OCCIDENTALIS.
EASTERN NORTH AMERICA.
PRESENTED BY ARTHUR KANE, ESQ.

After a few weeks of assiduous trapping, however, Kane felt bound to
acknowledge that this modest ambition of his seemed remote from
fulfilment. Every kind of trap he could think of, that would take a
beast alive, he tried in every kind of way. And having run the whole
insidious gamut, he would turn patiently to run it all over again. Of
course, the result was inevitable, for no beast, not even such a one
as the Gray Master, is a match, in the long run, for a man who is in
earnest. Yet Kane's triumph, when it blazed upon his startled eyes at
last, was indirect. In avoiding, and at the same time uncovering and
making mock of, Kane's traps, the great wo