ay Baree lay without moving.
The fever burned in his blood. It flamed high and swift toward death;
then it ebbed slowly, and life conquered. At noon he came forth. He was
weak, and he wobbled on his legs. His hind leg still dragged, and he
was racked with pain. But it was a splendid day. The sun was warm; the
snow was thawing; the sky was like a great blue sea; and the floods of
life coursed warmly again through Baree's veins. But now, for all time,
his desires were changed, and his great quest at an end.

A red ferocity grew in Baree's eyes as he snarled in the direction of
last night's fight with the wolves. They were no longer his people.
They were no longer of his blood. Never again could the hunt call lure
him or the voice of the pack rouse the old longing. In him there was a
thing newborn, an undying hatred for the wolf, a hatred that was to
grow in him until it became like a disease in his vitals, a thing ever
present and insistent, demanding vengeance on their kind. Last night he
had gone to them a comrade. Today he was an outcast. Cut and maimed,
bearing with him scars for all time, he had learned his lesson of the
wilderness. Tomorrow, and the next day, and for days after that without
number, he would remember the lesson well.

CHAPTER 19

At the cabin on the Gray Loon, on the fourth night of Baree's absence,
Pierrot was smoking his pipe after a great supper of caribou tenderloin
he had brought in from the trail, and Nepeese was listening to his tale
of the remarkable shot he had made, when a sound at the door
interrupted them. Nepeese opened it, and Baree came in. The cry of
welcome that was on the girl's lips died there instantly, and Pierrot
stared as if he could not quite believe this creature that had returned
was the wolf dog. Three days and nights of hunger in which he could not
hunt because of the leg that dragged had put on him the marks of
starvation. Battle-scarred and covered with dried blood clots that
still clung tenaciously to his long hair, he was a sight that drew at
last a long despairing breath from Nepeese. A queer smile was growing
in Pierrot's face as he leaned forward in his chair. Then slowly rising
to his feet and looking closer, he said to Nepeese:

"Ventre Saint Gris! Oui, he has been to the pack, Nepeese, and the pack
turned on him. It was not a two-wolf fight--non! It was the pack. He is
cut and torn in fifty places. And--mon Dieu, he is alive!"

In Pierrot's voice there w