his head up and his nose tilted to the blue
sky he was sniffing the air. What was it that came to him with the
perfumes of the forests and the green meadow? Why was it that he
trembled now as he stood there? What was there in the air? Carvel asked
himself, and his questing eyes tried to answer the questions. Nothing.
There was death here--death and desertion, that was all. And then, all
at once, there came from Baree a strange cry--almost a human cry--and
he was gone like the wind.

Carvel had thrown off his pack. He dropped his rifle beside it now, and
followed Baree. He ran swiftly, straight across the open, into the
dwarf balsams, and into a grass-grown path that had once been worn by
the travel of feet. He ran until he was panting for breath, and then
stopped, and listened. He could hear nothing of Baree. But that old
worn trail led on under the forest trees, and he followed it.

Close to the deep, dark pool in which he and the Willow had disported
so often Baree, too, had stopped. He could hear the rippling of water,
and his eyes shone with a gleaming fire as he searched for Nepeese. He
expected to see her there, her slim white body shimmering in some dark
shadow of overhanging spruce, or gleaming suddenly white as snow in one
of the warm plashes of sunlight. His eyes sought out their old hiding
places; the great split rock on the other side, the shelving banks
under which they used to dive like otter, the spruce boughs that dipped
down to the surface, and in the midst of which the Willow loved to
pretend to hide while he searched the pool for her. And at last the
realization was borne upon him that she was not there, that he had
still farther to go.

He went on to the tepee. The little open space in which they had built
their hidden wigwam was flooded with sunshine that came through a break
in the forest to the west. The tepee was still there. It did not seem
very much changed to Baree. And rising from the ground in front of the
tepee was what had come to him faintly on the still air--the smoke of a
small fire. Over that fire was bending a person, and it did not strike
Baree as amazing, or at all unexpected, that this person should have
two great shining braids down her back. He whined, and at his whine the
person grew a little rigid, and turned slowly.

Even then it seemed quite the most natural thing in the world that it
should be Nepeese, and none other. He had lost her yesterday. Today he
had found her. An