. At
noon I made a halt and snatched a little sleep, for I had purposed to
travel through the night. Some hours after darkness had fallen, I
began to be haunted with the old sense that something was following.
At first I heard no sound, for I was travelling over open ground.
Presently I had to enter a thicket, and there I was made certain; for
I could distinctly hear the snapping of branches, as if bent and
forced aside by the passage of some forest animal. I pushed rapidly
ahead, for it was not the safest place in which to be attacked. As I
glanced across my shoulder and from side to side, I continually
caught glimpses of a thing which was grey.

"Sometimes I was certain that I saw a face peering out at me from
above the brake; but whether it was that of the old man or of the
timber-wolf, I could not tell--strangely enough, their faces seemed to
me to be one and the same. When the day came, I felt that I was free
again, and making camp I slept. The same thing happened next night,
and the night after that, for it took me more than three days to make
the homeward journey. But each night, as I moved farther away from the
Forbidden River's mouth, the creature which followed had to traverse a
longer and longer trail to come up with me, as I approached nearer to
my destination.

"After I had crossed the river and reached the hut, he rarely came;
and then only when the dusk had fallen early because of clouds or
rain. Yet there were times, just before the dawn, when I fancied that
I could see him watching me from the bank."

"But what has this got to do with the half-breed?" Granger broke in
impatiently.

"That's what I'd like to know myself. But I don't know, so I'm simply
giving you facts as they happened. The horror of that wolf's face,
which I confused with my memory of the old man's, made a deep
impression on me; I suppose that's why I've said so much about it.

"However mistaken you may have been about the Forbidden River never
having been travelled, you were correct enough when you told me that
it was haunted. . . . And it isn't pleasant to be living a five-days'
journey from the nearest white man, in a place where the beasts look
like lost souls and have the eyes of the damned."

Granger shrugged his shoulders, "And the half-breed?" he inquired.

"The half-breed turned up five weeks after my return from the cache.
I'd been out cutting cord-wood and, when I came back, he was sitting
at the door of the hut. How