and there, fringed by their black spruce and cedar and balsam--a
country of storm, of deep snows, and men and women whose blood ran red
with the thrill that the hardship and the never-ending adventure of the
wild.

But this was spring. And such a spring as had not come to the Canadian
north country in many years. Until three days ago there had been a
deluge of warm rains, and since then the sun had inundated the land
with the golden warmth of summer. The last chill was gone from the air,
and the last bit of frozen earth and muck from the deepest and blackest
swamps, North, south, east and west the wilderness world was a glory of
bursting life, of springtime mellowing into summer. Ridge upon ridge of
yellows and greens and blacks swept away into the unknown distances
like the billows of a vast sea; and between them lay the valleys and
swamps, the lakes and waterways, glad with the rippling song of running
waters, the sweet scents of early flowering time, and the joyous voice
of all mating creatures.

Just under Cragg's Ridge lay the paradise, a meadow-like sweep of plain
that reached down to the edge of Clearwater Lake, with clumps of
poplars and white birch and darker tapestries of spruce and balsams
dotting it like islets in a sea of verdant green. The flowers were two
weeks ahead of their time and the sweet perfumes of late June, instead
of May, rose up out of the plain, and already there was nesting in the
velvety splashes of timber.

In the edge of a clump of this timber, flat on his belly, lay Peter.
The love of adventure was in him, and today he had sallied forth on his
most desperate enterprise. For the first time he had gone alone to the
edge of Clearwater Lake, half a mile away; boldly he had trotted up and
down the white strip of beach where the girl's footprints still
remained in the sand, and defiantly he had yipped at the shimmering
vastness of the water, and at the white gulls circling near him in
quest of dead fish flung ashore. Peter was three months old. Yesterday
he had been a timid pup, shrinking from the bigness and strangeness of
everything about him; but today he had braved the lake trail on his own
nerve, and nothing had dared to come near him in spite of his yipping,
so that a great courage and a great desire were born in him.

Therefore, in returning, he had paused in the edge of a great clump of
balsams and spruce, and lay flat on his belly, his sharp little eyes
leveled yearningly at the b