Only the wild things seem to know what complete absence of motion means.  To stand like a form in rock, not a muscle quivering or a hair stirring, is never a feat for ragged, over stretched human nerves; and it requires a perfect muscle control that is generally only known to the beasts of the forest.  Only a few times in a lifetime in human beings are the little, outward motions actually suspended; perhaps under the paralysis of great terror or, with painstaking effort, before a photographer’s camera.  But with the beasts it is an everyday accomplishment necessary to their survival.  The fawn that can not stand absolutely motionless, his dappled skin blending perfectly with the background of shrubbery shot with sunlight, comes to an end quickly in the fangs of some great beast of prey.  The panther that can not lurk, not a muscle quivering, in his ambush beside the deer trail, never knows full feeding.  The creature on the opposite side of the glade seemed as bereft of motion as the spruce trees in the moonlight, or the cliff above the cave.

“What is it?” Beatrice whispered.  The man’s eyes strained into the gloom.

“I don’t know.  It may be just a moose, or maybe a caribou.  But it may be—­”

He tiptoed to the door of the cave, and his eye fell to the crouching form of Fenris.  The creature outside was neither moose nor caribou.  The great wolf of the North does not stand at bay to the antlered people.  He was poised to spring, his fangs bared and his fierce eyes hot with fire, but he was not hunting.  Whatever moved in the darkness without, the wolf had no desire to go forth and attack.  Perhaps he would fight to the death to protect the occupants of the cave; but surely an ancient and devastating fear had hold of him.  Evidently he recognized the intruder as an ancestral enemy that held sovereignty over the forest.

At that instant Ben leaped through the cavern maw to reach his gun.  There was nothing to be gained by waiting further.  This was a savage and an uninhabited land; and the great beasts of prey that ranged the forest had not yet learned the restraint born of the fear of man.  And he knew one breathless instant of panic when his eye failed to locate the weapon in the faint light of the fire.

Holding hard, he tried to remember where he had left it.  The form across the glade was no longer motionless.  Straining, Ben saw the soft roll of a great shadow, almost imperceptible in the gloom—­advancing slowly toward him.  Then the faint glow of the fire caught and reflected in the creature’s eyes.

They suddenly glowed out in the half-darkness, two rather small circles of dark red, close together and just alike.  This night visitor was not moose or caribou, or was it one of the lesser hunters, lynx or wolverine, or a panther wandered far from his accustomed haunts.  The twin circles were too far above the ground.  And whatever it was, no doubt remained but that the creature was steadily stalking him across the soft grass.