filled his jaws with its feathers. In the face of that
triumph he sensed the fact that he had run away in following Neewa, and
he was possessed with the desire to go back and have it out to a
finish. It was the blood of the Airedale and the Spitz growing stronger
in him, fearless of defeat; the blood of his father, the giant
hunting-hound Hela. It was the demand of his breed, with its mixture of
wolfish courage and fox-like persistency backed by the powerful jaws
and Herculean strength of the Mackenzie hound, and if Neewa had not
drawn deeper under the windfall he would have gone out again and yelped
his challenge to the feathered things from which they had fled.

Neewa was smarting under the red-hot stab of Oohoomisew's talons, and
he wanted no more of the fight that came out of the air. He began
licking his wounds, and after a while Miki went back to him and smelled
of the fresh, warm blood. It made him growl. He knew that it was
Neewa's blood, and his eyes glowed like twin balls of fire as they
watched the opening through which they had entered into the dark tangle
of fallen trees.

For an hour he did not move, and in that hour, as in the hour after the
killing of the rabbit, he GREW. When at last he crept out cautiously
from under the windfall the sun was sinking behind the western forests.
He peered about him, watching for movement and listening for sound. The
sagging and apologetic posture of puppyhood was gone from him. His
overgrown feet stood squarely on the ground; his angular legs were as
hard as if carven out of knotty wood; his body was tense, his ears
stood up, his head was rigidly set between the bony shoulders that
already gave evidence of gigantic strength to come. About him he knew
was the Big Adventure. The world was no longer a world of play and of
snuggling under the hands of a master. Something vastly more thrilling
had come into it now.

After a time he dropped on his belly close to the opening under the
windfall and began chewing at the end of rope which dragged from about
his neck. The sun sank lower. It disappeared. Still he waited for Neewa
to come out and lie with him in the open. As the twilight thickened
into deeper gloom he drew himself into the edge of the door under the
windfall and found Neewa there. Together they peered forth into the
mysterious night.

For a time there was the utter stillness of the first hour of darkness
in the northland. Up in the clear sky the stars came out i