Nepeese knew that he must be angry.  But what had she to fear?  Mon pere would be angry, too, if she told him what had happened at the edge of the chasm.  But she would not tell him.  He might kill the man from Lac Bain.  A factor was great.  But Pierrot, her father, was greater.  It was an unlimited faith in her, born of her mother.  Perhaps even now Pierrot was sending him back to Lac Bain, telling him that his business was there.  But she would not return to the cabin to see.  She would wait here.  Mon pere would understand—­and he knew where to find her when the man was gone.  But it would have been such fun to throw sticks at him as he went!

After a little Nepeese returned to Baree.  She brought him water and gave him a piece of raw fish.  For hours they were alone, and with each hour there grew stronger in Baree the desire to follow the girl in every movement she made, to crawl close to her when she sat down, to feel the touch of her dress, of her hand—­and to hear her voice.  But he did not show this desire.  He was still a little savage of the forests—­a four-footed barbarian born half of a wolf and half of a dog; and he lay still.  With Umisk he would have played.  With Oohoomisew he would have fought.  At Bush McTaggart he would have bared his fangs, and buried them deep when the chance came.  But the girl was different.  Like the Kazan of old, he had begun to worship.  If the Willow had freed Baree, he would not have run away.  If she had left him, he would possibly have followed her—­at a distance.  His eyes were never away from her.  He watched her build a small fire and cook a piece of the fish.  He watched her eat her dinner.

It was quite late in the afternoon when she came and sat down close to him, with her lap full of flowers which she twined in the long, shining braids of her hair.  Then, playfully, she began beating Baree with the end of one of these braids.  He shrank under the soft blows, and with that low, birdlike laughter in her throat, Nepeese drew his head into her lap where the scatter of flowers lay.  She talked to him.  Her hand stroked his head.  Then it remained still, so near that he wanted to thrust out his warm red tongue and caress it.  He breathed in the flower-scented perfume of it—­and lay as if dead.  It was a glorious moment.  Nepeese, looking down on him, could not see that he was breathing.

There came an interruption.  It was the snapping of a dry stick.  Through the forest Pierrot had come with the stealth of a cat, and when they looked up, he stood at the edge of the open.  Baree knew that it was not Bush McTaggart.  But it was a man-beast!  Instantly his body stiffened under the Willow’s hand.  He drew back slowly and cautiously from her lap, and as Pierrot advanced, Baree snarled.  The next instant Nepeese had risen and had run to Pierrot.  The look in her father’s face alarmed her.

“What has happened, mon pere?” she cried.

Pierrot shrugged his shoulders.