d chord of
the river, as descended upon them now. It was new and strange to the
conscious life of Ben, himself, the veritable offspring of the woods;
although infinitely old and familiar to a still, watching, secret self
within him. It was as if he had searched forever for this place and had
just found it, and it answered, to the full, a queer mood of silence in
his own heart. The wind had died down now. The last wail of a
coyote--disconsolate on a far-away ridge--had trembled away into
nothingness; the voices of the Little People who had chirped and rustled
in the tree aisles during the daylight hours were stilled with a
breathless, dramatic stillness. Such sound as remained over the
interminable breadth of that dark forest was only the faint stirrings
and rustlings of the beasts of prey going to their hunting; and this was
only a moving tone in the great chord of silence.

To Ben the falling night brought a return of his most terrible moods.
Beatrice sensed them in his pale, set face and his cold, wolfish eyes.
The wolf sat beside him, swept by his master's mood, gazing with deadly
speculations into the darkness. Beatrice saw them as one breed to-night.
The wild had wholly claimed this repatriated son. The paw of the Beast
was heavy upon him; the softening influences of civilization seemed
wholly dispelled. There was little here to remind her that this was the
twentieth century. The primitive that lies just under the skin in all
men was in the ascendancy; and there was little indeed to distinguish
him from the hunter of long ago, a grizzled savage at the edge of the
ice who chased the mammoth and wild pony, knowing no home but the
forest and no gentleness unknown to the wolf that ran at his heels....
The tenderness and sympathy he had had for her earlier that day seemed
quite gone now. She searched for it in vain in the dark and savage lines
of his pale face.

Because it has always been that the happiness of women must depend upon
the mood of men, her own spirits fell. The despair that descended upon
her brought also resentment and rage; and soon she slipped away quietly
to her bed. She drew the blankets over her face; but no tears wet her
cheeks to-night. She was dry-eyed, thoughtful--full of vague plans.

She lay awake a long time, until at last a little, faint ray of hope
beamed bright and clear. More than a hundred miles farther down the
Yuga, past the mouth of Grizzly River, not far from the great,
north-flowi