The wolf had recovered from his fear of the river, by now, and he was crouched, alert and still, in his place.  His gaze was fast upon the shore line; and the green and yellow fires that mark the beast were ablaze again in his eyes.  Fenris too made instinctive response to those breathless forests; and Ben knew that the bond between them was never so close as now.

Fenris also knew that here was his own realm, the land in which the great Fear had not yet laid its curse.  The forest still thronged with game, the wood trails would be his own.  Here was the motherland, not only to him but to his master, too.  They were its fierce children:  one by breed, the other because he answered, to the full, the call of the wild from which no man is wholly immune.

Ben could have understood the wolf’s growing exultation.  The war he was about to wage with Neilson. would be on his own ground, in a land that enhanced and developed his innate, natural powers, and where he had every advantage.  The wolf does not run into the heart of busy cities in pursuit of his prey.  He tries to decoy it into his own fastnesses.

A sudden movement on the part of Beatrice, in the bow of the canoe, caught his eye.  She had leaned forward and was reaching among the supplies.  His mind at once leaped to the box of shells for her pistol that he had thrown among the duffle, but evidently this was not the object of her search.  She lifted into her hands a paper parcel, the same she had brought from her cabin early that morning.

He tried to analyze the curious mingling of emotions in her face.  It was neither white with disdain nor dark with wrath; and the tears were gone from her eyes.  Rather her expression was speculative, pensive.  Presently her eyes met his.

His heart leaped; why he did not know.  “What is, it?” he asked.

“Ben—­I called you that yesterday and there’s no use going back to last names now—­I’ve made an important decision.”

“I hope it’s a happy one,” he ventured.

“It’s as happy as it can be, under the circumstances.  Ben, I came of a line of frontiersmen—­the forest people—­and if the woods teach one thing it is to make the best of any bad situation.”

Ben nodded.  For all his long training he had not entirely mastered this lesson himself, but he knew she spoke true.

“We’ve found out how hard Fate can hit—­if I can make it plain,” she went on.  “We’ve found out there are certain powers—­or devils—­or something else, and what I don’t know—­that are always lying in wait for people, ready to strike them down.  Maybe you would call it Destiny.  But the Destiny city men know isn’t the Destiny we know out here—­I don’t have to tell you that.  We see Nature just as she is, without any gay clothes, and we know the cruelty behind her smile, and the evil plans behind her gentle words.”

The man was amazed.  Evidently the stress and excitement of the morning had brought out the fanciful and poetic side of the girl’s nature.