He knew, now, that he was leaving her forever, and there was an ache in his heart that had never been there before, a pain that was not of the club or whip, of cold or hunger, but which was greater than them all, and which filled him with a desire to throw back his head and cry out his loneliness to the gray emptiness of the sky.

Back in the camp the girl’s voice quivered.

“He is gone.”

The man’s strong voice choked a little.

“Yes, he is gone. He knew—­and I didn’t.  I’d give—­a year of my life—­if I hadn’t whipped him yesterday and last night.  He won’t come back.”

Isobel Thorpe’s hand tightened on his arm.

“He will!” she cried.  “He won’t leave me.  He loved me, if he was savage and terrible.  And he knows that I love him.  He’ll come back—­”

“Listen!”

From deep in the forest there came a long wailing howl, filled with a plaintive sadness.  It was Kazan’s farewell to the woman.

After that cry Kazan sat for a long time on his haunches, sniffing the new freedom of the air, and watching the deep black pits in the forest about him, as they faded away before dawn.  ’Now and then, since the day the traders had first bought him and put him into sledge-traces away over on the Mackenzie, he had often thought of this freedom longingly, the wolf blood in him urging him to take it.  But he had never quite dared.  It thrilled him now.  There were no clubs here, no whips, none of the man-beasts whom he had first learned to distrust, and then to hate.  It was his misfortune—­that quarter-strain of wolf; and the clubs, instead of subduing him, had added to the savagery that was born in him.  Men had been his worst enemies.  They had beaten him time and again until he was almost dead.  They called him “bad,” and stepped wide of him, and never missed the chance to snap a whip over his back.  His body was covered with scars they had given him.

He had never felt kindness, or love, until the first night the woman had put her warm little hand on his head, and had snuggled her face close down to his, while Thorpe—­her husband—­had cried out in horror.  He had almost buried his fangs in her white flesh, but in an instant her gentle touch, and her sweet voice, had sent through him that wonderful thrill that was his first knowledge of love.  And now it was a man who was driving him from her, away from the hand that had never held a club or a whip, and he growled as he trotted deeper into the forest.

He came to the edge of a swamp as day broke.  For a time he had been filled with a strange uneasiness, and light did not quite dispel it.  At last he was free of men.  He could detect nothing that reminded him of their hated presence in the air.  But neither could he smell the presence of other dogs, of the sledge, the fire, of companionship and food, and so far back as he could remember they had always been a part of his life.