It was a strange wolf she was to come upon in the forest that day.
With corduroy knickers tucked in high laced boots, a flannel shirt open wide at the neck, and a small hat crammed well down on her head, this stalwart girl might have been taken for a man as, rifle under arm, she trudged through the deep shadows of the evergreen forest covering the slope of Greenstone Ridge.
That she was in her element was shown by the spring in her footstep, the glad, eager look in her eyes.
“Life!” she breathed more than once. “Life! How marvelous it is!
“‘I love life!’” She hummed the words of a song she had once heard.
“Life! Life!” she whispered. Here indeed was life in its most primitive form. At times through a narrow opening she caught a glimpse of gray gulls soaring like phantom ships over the water. To her ears came the long, low whistle of some strange bird. She was not surprised when she found herself standing face to face with a magnificent broad-antlered moose. She stood quite still.
Great eyed, the moose stared at her. A sound to her right caught her attention. She looked away for an instant. When her gaze returned to the spot where the monarch of the forest had stood, he had vanished.
“Gone!” she exclaimed low. “Gone! He was taller than a man, yet he vanished without a sound! How strange! How sort of wonderful! But I wonder—”
But there was that sound from below. Snapping of twigs and swishing of branches. No moose that. She would see what was down there.
She did see, and that almost at once. A few silent steps, and she came upon him—a man. He was standing at a spot where a break in the evergreens left a view of Duncan’s Bay.