The Beast that dwells under every man's skin, in a greater or less degree, was in the full ascendancy at last. The unnamable ferocity that marks the death-leap of the wild hunters was in his face. In his eyes was cunning,—such craft as marks the pack in its hunting. All over him was written that unearthly rage that is alone the property and trait of the woods creatures: the fury with which a she-wolf fights for her cubs or a rattlesnake avenges the death of its mate. Mercy, remorse, compassion there was none.
And the demon gods of the wilderness rejoiced. For uncounted thousands of years the tide of battle had flowed against them; and it was long and long since they had won such a victory as this. Mostly their men children had forsaken their leafy bowers to live in houses. They tilled the ground rather than hunt in the forest. The cattle that had once run wild in the marshes now fed dully in enclosed pastures; the horses—that mighty breed that once mated and fought and died in freedom on the high lands—pulled lowly burdens in the cultivated fields. Even some of the canine people too—first cousins to the wolves themselves—had sold themselves into slavery for a gnawed bone and a chimney corner. But to-night the wild had claimed its own again.
Here was one, at least, who had come back into his own. The forest seemed to whisper and thrill with rapture.