except by
such highly strung, nerve-tingling, wild-blooded creatures as these; and
in some measure at least it is the escape from Fear. For there is no
other name than Fear for the great, white, merciless winter that had
just departed.

High and low, every woods creature knows this dread, this age-old
apprehension of the deepening snow. Perhaps it had its birth in eons
past, when the great glaciers brought their curse of gold into the
temperate regions, locking land and sea under tons of ice. Never the
frost comes, and the snow deepens on the land, and the rivers and lakes
are struck silent as if by a cruel magician's magic, but that this old
fear returns, creeping like poison into the nerves, bowing down the
heart and chilling the warm wheel of the blood. For the rodents and the
digging people--even for the mighty grizzly himself--the season means
nothing but the cold and the darkness of their underground lairs. For
those that try to brave the winter, the portion is famine and cold; the
vast, far-spreading silence broken only by the sobbing song of the wolf
pack, starving and afraid on the distant ridges. Man is the conqueror,
the Mighty One who can strike the fire, but yet he too knows the creepy,
haunting dread and deep-lying fear of the northern winter. But that
dread season was gone now, yielding for a few happy months to a gay
invader from the South; and the whole forest world rejoiced.

Both Beatrice and Ben could sense the new wakening and revival in the
still depths about them. The forest was hushed, tremulous, yet vibrant
and ecstatic with renewed life. The old grizzly bear had left his winter
lair; and good feeding was putting the fat again on his bones; the old
cow moose had stolen away into the farther marshes for some mystery and
miracle of her own. Everywhere young calves of caribou were breathing
the air for the first time, trying to stand on wobbly legs and pushing
with greedy noses into overflowing udders. The rich new grass yielded
milk in plenty for all these wilderness nurslings. Even the she-wolf
forgot her wicked savagery to nurse and fondle her whelps in the lair;
even the she-lynx, hunting with renewed fervor through the branches,
knew of a marvelous secret in a hollow log that she would be torn to
scraps of fur rather than reveal.

The she-ermine, her white hair falling out, was brooding a litter of
cutthroats and murderers in a nest of grass and twigs, and each one of
them was a source of p