. There
was a sound of scuffling outside, followed by a thud. Leaping to his
feet, dazed and bewildered, he had run out in time to see a
timber-wolf of monstrous size, with Spurling's arm in its mouth,
dragging him away into the forest. Careless of his own safety, he had
gone after the animal, belabouring its head with the stock of his
rifle, for he was afraid to shoot, lest he should wound his companion.
It had dropped its prey and fled, bounding off into the dusk between
the tree-trunks, leaving Spurling a little mauled but not much
injured. This experience had served to prove to them that, however
much they hated, they were still indispensable to each other's safety,
and must hold together.

Granger, for his own peace of mind, had sought to find an explanation
for this happening. If the beast was indeed Beorn's soul, then why
was it exiled there, on the Forbidden River? Had Beorn killed the
miners, in his underground fights on the Comstock, not out of
righteous indignation, as he had stated, but only for the pleasure of
destroying life and out of envious, disappointed avarice? Had he
mocked God consciously in making Him responsible for those crimes, and
in attributing to Him their inspiration? If these things were so, then
this might have been his fitting punishment, that, when by his own
wickedness he had made himself an outcast from the company of mankind,
and had been compelled to banish himself, for the sake of his own
preservation, to a land where nothing was of much value, money least
of all, there he had discovered the gold in the profitless search of
which he had made himself vile. The power over gladness, which it
would have represented to another man, had been of no use to him now,
for he had not dared to take it out of the district to where it would
acquire its artificial worth; yet he had not dared to remain on the
Forbidden River: for there was no food there. So his body and soul had
parted company; his body going south to God's Voice, while his soul
stayed near to the thing after which it had lusted, for which it had
exchanged its happiness, to guard it, that it might not become the
possession of a freer man and bring him the gladness which to a
murderer is denied.

This had seemed to Granger to be the only explanation which fitted in
with all the facts. In accepting it, he had found room for the
suspicion that he also had laid waste his life not for the sake of
romance, not for his dream's sake, but