Here it was very quiet.  The swamp lay in a hollow between two ridge-mountains, and the spruce and cedar grew low and thick—­so thick that there was almost no snow under them, and day was like twilight.  Two things he began to miss more than all others—­food and company.  Both the wolf and the dog that was in him demanded the first, and that part of him that was dog longed for the latter.  To both desires the wolf blood that was strong in him rose responsively.  It told him that somewhere in this silent world between the two ridges there was companionship, and that all he had to do to find it was to sit back on his haunches, and cry out his loneliness.  More than once something trembled in his deep chest, rose in his throat, and ended there in a whine.  It was the wolf howl, not yet quite born.

Food came more easily than voice.  Toward midday he cornered a big white rabbit under a log, and killed it.  The warm flesh and blood was better than frozen fish, or tallow and bran, and the feast he had gave him confidence.  That afternoon he chased many rabbits, and killed two more.  Until now, he had never known the delight of pursuing and killing at will, even though he did not eat all he killed.

But there was no fight in the rabbits.  They died too easily.  They were very sweet and tender to eat, when he was hungry, but the first thrill of killing them passed away after a time.  He wanted something bigger.  He no longer slunk along as if he were afraid, or as if he wanted to remain hidden.  He held his head up.  His back bristled.  His tail swung free and bushy, like a wolf’s.  Every hair in his body quivered with the electric energy of life and action.  He traveled north and west.  It was the call of early days—­the days away up on the Mackenzie.  The Mackenzie was a thousand miles away.

He came upon many trails in the snow that day, and sniffed the scents left by the hoofs of moose and caribou, and the fur-padded feet of a lynx.  He followed a fox, and the trail led him to a place shut in by tall spruce, where the snow was beaten down and reddened with blood.  There was an owl’s head, feathers, wings and entrails lying here, and he knew that there were other hunters abroad besides himself.

Toward evening he came upon tracks in the snow that were very much like his own.  They were quite fresh, and there was a warm scent about them that made him whine, and filled him again with that desire to fall back upon his haunches and send forth the wolf-cry.  This desire grew stronger in him as the shadows of night deepened in the forest.  He had traveled all day, but he was not tired.  There was something about night, now that there were no men near, that exhilarated him strangely.  The wolf blood in him ran swifter and swifter.  To-night it was clear.  The sky was filled with stars.  The moon rose.  And at last he settled back in the snow and turned his head straight up to the spruce-tops, and the wolf came out of him in a long mournful cry which quivered through the still night for miles.