He set out.

And Neewa, far up the creek, still followed hopefully and yearningly over the trail of Miki.

Half way to the dip, in a small open meadow that was a glory of sun, they met.  There was no very great demonstration.  They stopped and looked at each other for a moment, as if to make sure that there was no mistake.  Neewa grunted.  Miki wagged his tail.  They smelled noses.  Neewa responded with a little squeal, and Miki whined.  It was as if they had said,

“Hello, Miki!”

“Hello, Neewa!”

And then Neewa lay down in the sun and Miki sprawled himself out beside him.  After all, it was a funny world.  It went to pieces now and then, but it always came together again.  And to-day their world had thoroughly adjusted itself.  Once more they were chums—­ and they were happy.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was the Flying-Up Moon—­deep and slumbering midsummer—­in all the land of Keewatin.  From Hudson Bay to the Athabasca and from the Hight of Land to the edge of the Great Barrens, forest, plain, and swamp lay in peace and forgetfulness under the sun-glowing days and the star-filled nights of the August MUKOO-Sawin.  It was the breeding moon, the growing moon, the moon when all wild life came into its own once more.  For the trails of this wilderness world—­so vast that it reached a thousand miles east and west and as far north and south—­were empty of human life.  At the Hudson Bay Company’s posts—­scattered here and there over the illimitable domain of fang and claw—­had gathered the thousands of hunters and trappers, with their wives and children, to sleep and gossip and play through the few weeks of warmth and plenty until the strife and tragedy of another winter began.  For these people of the forests it was MUKOO-Sawin—­the great Play Day of the year; the weeks in which they ran up new debts and established new credits at the Posts; the weeks in which they foregathered at every Post as at a great fair—­playing, and making love, and marrying, and fattening up for the many days of hunger and gloom to come.

It was because of this that the wild things had come fully into the possession of their world for a space.  There was no longer the scent of man in all the wilderness.  They were not hunted.  There were no traps laid for their feet, no poison-baits placed temptingly where they might pass.  In the fens and on the lakes the wildfowl squawked and honked unfearing to their young, just learning the power of wing; the lynx played with her kittens without sniffing the air for the menace of man; the cow moose went openly into the cool water of the lakes with their calves; the wolverine and the marten ran playfully over the roofs of deserted shacks and cabins; the beaver and the otter tumbled and frolicked in their dark pools; the birds sang, and through all the wilderness there was the drone and song of Nature as some Great Power