old iron, fished to his heart's content in
rivers where an artificial fly had never fallen and the trout swarmed in
uncounted numbers in the pools.

Darting down the rapids Ben felt the beginnings of an exquisite
exhilaration. Part of it arose from the very thrill and excitement of
their headlong pace; but partly it had a deeper, more portentous origin.
Here was his own country--this Back There. While all the spruce forest
in which he had lived had been his natural range and district--his own
kind of land with which he felt close and intimate relations--this was
even more his home than his own birthplace. By light of a secret
quality, hard to recognize, he was of it, and it was of him. He felt the
joy of one who sees the gleam of his own hearth through a distant
window.

He _knew_ this land; it was as if he had simply been away, through the
centuries, and had come home. The shadows and the stillness had the
exact depth and tone that was true and right; the forest fragance was
undefiled; the dark sky line was like something he had dreamed come
true. He felt a strange and growing excitement, as if magnificent
adventure were opening out before him. His gaze fell, with a queer sense
of understanding, to Fenris.

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 reachi