the mountains, but when
driven by hunger they showed like their brethren elsewhere extreme
ferocity, and were known to devour human beings. Now the wolves like the
owl were magnified in the luminous moonlight, and one at their head
seemed to be truly of gigantic size. He reminded Henry of the king wolf
that had pursued Shif'less Sol and himself, and he had a singular fancy
that he was the same great brute, reincarnated. He shivered at his own
thought, and then chided himself fiercely. The king wolf had been
killed, he was as dead as a stone, and he could not come back to earth
to plague him.

But the beast, like the bird, was truly monstrous. He stood upon a
slight mound at the bottom of the ravine, and his figure bathed in the
glow of the moon and the stars rose to twice its real height. Henry saw
the foam upon the red mouth, the white fangs and the savage eyes, in
which, his fancy still vivid, he read hunger, ferocity and terror too.
Around him but on the lower plane were gathered the full score of the
pack, gaunt and fierce. Suddenly, the leader raised his head and like a
dog bayed the moon. The score took up the cry and the long whine was
carried far on the light wind, to be followed by deep silence.

The voice of the wolf bore Henry even farther back than the voice of the
owl, and his preternaturally acute senses took on an edge which the
modern man never knows in his civilized state. He heard the fluff of the
owl's feathers as it moved and the panting of the wolves in the valley
below. Then he saw the leader walk from the low mound and take a slow
and deliberate course along the slope, with the others following in
single file like Indians. The king was leading them nearer to the rocky
hollow, and Henry suspected they were changing their position because
the ring of warriors was beginning to close in again. He heard a
flapping of wings, and a huge bald-headed eagle settled on a bough near
him, whence it looked with red eyes at the owl, while the owl, with eyes
equally red, looked back again.

The suspicious, not to say jealous, manner with which the two birds
regarded each other, when the forest was wide enough for both, and
countless millions more like them, amused Henry. Both were alarmed, and
it was easy enough for them to fly away, but they did not do so, drawn
in a kind of fascination toward the danger they feared. Meanwhile the
wolves were still coming up the slope, but the black bear in the snug
hollow ne