gs that were holding him to the tepee, the old swimming
pool, the familiar paths in the forest, and the two graves that were
not so lonely now under the tall spruce. He went. He had no
reason--simply went. It may be that there is a Master whose hand guides
the beast as well as the man, and that we know just enough of this
guidance to call it instinct. For, in dragging himself away, Baree
faced the Great Adventure.

It was there, in the north, waiting for him--and into the north he went.

CHAPTER 24

It was early in August when Baree left the Gray Loon. He had no
objective in view. But there was still left upon his mind, like the
delicate impression of light and shadow on a negative, the memories of
his earlier days. Things and happenings that he had almost forgotten
recurred to him now, as his trail led him farther and farther away from
the Gray Loon. And his earlier experiences became real again, pictures
thrown out afresh in his mind by the breaking of the last ties that
held him to the home of the Willow. Involuntarily he followed the trail
of these impressions--of these past happenings, and slowly they helped
to build up new interests for him.

A year in his life was a long time--a decade of man's experience. It
was more than a year ago that he had left Kazan and Gray Wolf and the
old windfall, and yet now there came back to him indistinct memories of
those days of his earliest puppyhood, of the stream into which he had
fallen, and of his fierce battle with Papayuchisew. It was his later
experiences that roused the older memories. He came to the blind canyon
up which Nepeese and Pierrot had chased him. That seemed but yesterday.
He entered the little meadow, and stood beside the great rock that had
almost crushed the life out of the Willow's body; and then he
remembered where Wakayoo, his big bear friend, had died under Pierrot's
rifle--and he smelled of Wakayoo's whitened bones where they lay
scattered in the green grass, with flowers growing up among them.

A day and night he spent in the little meadow before he went back out
of the canyon and into his old haunts along the creek, where Wakayoo
had fished for him. There was another bear here now, and he also was
fishing. Perhaps he was a son or a grandson of Wakayoo. Baree smelled
where he had made his fish caches, and for three days he lived on fish
before he struck out for the North.

And now, for the first time in many weeks, a bit of the old-time
eag