Matters reached a crisis between Fenris and himself one still, warm night in late July. The two were sitting side by side at the cavern maw, watching the slow enchantment of the forest under the spell of the rising moon; Beatrice had already gone to her hammock. As the last little blaze died in the fire, and it crackled at ever longer intervals, Ben suddenly made a moving discovery. The fringe of forest about him, usually so dreamlike and still, was simply breathing and throbbing with life.
Ben dropped his hand to the wolf's shoulders. "The little folks are calling on us to-night," he said quietly.
In all probability he spoke the truth. It was not an uncommon thing for the creatures of the wood—usually the lesser people such as rodents and the small hunters—to crowd close to the edge of the glade and try to puzzle out this ruddy mystery in its center. Unused to men they could never understand. Sometimes the lynx halted in his hunt to investigate, sometimes an old black bear—kindly, benevolent good-humored old bachelor that every naturalist loves—grunted and pondered at the edge of shadow, and sometimes even such lordly creatures as moose and caribou paused in their night journeys to see what was taking place.
Curiously, the wolf started violently at Ben's touch. The man suddenly regarded him with a gaze of deepest interest. The hair was erect on the powerful neck, the eyes swam in pale, blue fire, and he was staring away into the mysterious shadows.
"What do you see, old-timer?" Ben asked. "I wish I could see too."
He brought his senses to the finest focus, trying hard to understand. He was aware only of the strained silence at first. Then here and there, about the dimmining circle of firelight, he heard the soft rustle of little feet, the subdued crack of a twig or the scratch of a dead leaf. The forest smells—of which there is no category in heaven or earth—reached him with incredible clarity. These were faint, vaguely exciting smells, some of them the exquisite fragrances of summer flowers, others beyond his ken. And presently two small, bright circles appeared in a distant covert, glowed once, and then went out.
By peering closely, with unwinking eyes, he began to see other twin-circles of green and yellow light. Yet they were furtive little radiances—vanishing swiftly—and they were nothing of which to be afraid.
"They are out to-night," he murmured. "No wonder you're excited, Fenris. What is it—some celebration in the forest?"
There was no possible explanation. Foresters know that on certain nights the wilderness seems simply to teem with life—scratchings and rustlings in every covert—and on other nights it is still and lifeless as a desert. The wild folk were abroad to-night and were simply paying casual, curious visits to Ben's fire.
Once more Ben glanced at the wolf. The animal no longer crouched. Rather he was standing rigid, his head half-turned and lifted, gazing away toward a distant ridge behind the lake. A wilderness message had reached him, clear as a voice.