The gloom of foreboding that was in Jolly Roger’s voice and words seemed to settle over the cabin for many days after that, and more than ever Peter sensed the thrill and warning of that mysterious something which was impending.  He was developing swiftly, in flesh and bone and instinct, and there began to possess him now the beginning of that subtle caution and shrewdness which were to mean so much to him later on.  An instinct greater than reason, if it was not reason itself, told him that his master was constantly watching for something which did not come.  And that same instinct, or reason, impinged upon him the fact that it was a thing to be guarded against.  He did not go blindly into the mystery of things now.  He circumvented them, and came up from behind.  Craft and cunning replaced mere curiosity and puppyish egoism.  He was quick to learn, and Jolly Roger’s word became his law, so that only once or twice was he told a thing, and it became a part of his understanding.  While the keen, shrewd brain of his Airedale father developed inside Peter’s head, the flesh and blood development of his big, gentle, soft-footed Mackenzie hound mother kept pace in his body.  His legs and feet began to lose their grotesqueness.  Flesh began to cover the knots in his tail.  His head, bristling fiercely with wiry whiskers, seemed to pause for a space to give his lanky body a chance to catch up with it.  And in spite of his big feet, so clumsy that a few weeks ago they had stumbled over everything in his way, he could now travel without making a sound.

So it came to pass, after a time, that when Peter heard footsteps approaching the cabin he made no effort to reveal himself until he knew it was Jolly Roger who was coming.  And this was strangely in spite of the fact that in the five weeks since Nada had brought him from Cragg’s Ridge no one but Jolly Roger and Nada had set foot within sight of the shack.  It was an inborn caution, growing stronger in him each day.  There came one early evening when Peter made a discovery.  He had returned with Jolly Roger from a fishing trip farther down the creek, and scarcely had he set nose to the little clearing about the cabin when he caught the presence of a strange scent.  He investigated it swiftly, and found it all about the cabin, and very strong close up against the cabin door.  There were no doubts in Peter’s mind.  A man had been there, and this man had gone around and around the cabin, and had opened the door, and had even gone inside, for Peter found the scent of him on the floor.  He tried, in a way, to tell Jolly Roger.  He bristled, and whined, and looked searchingly into the darkening edge of the forest.  Jolly Roger quested with him for a few moments, and when he failed to find marks in the ground he began cleaning a fish for supper, and said.

“Probably a wolverine, Pied-Bot.  The rascal came to see what he could find while we were away.”

But Peter was not satisfied.  He was restless all that night.  Sounds which had been familiar now held a new significance for him.  The next day he was filled with a quiet but brooding expectancy.  He resented the intrustion of the strange footprints.  It was, in his process of instinctive reasoning, an encroachment upon the property rights of his master, and he was—­true to the law of his species—­the guardian of those rights.