But Gulo was taking no notice of them. He was used to attentions of
that kind; it was a little compliment--of hate--they all paid him. He
was looking persistently down the ranked, narrowing perspective of the
buttressed forest glade to where it faded in the blue-gray mist,
southward, as if he expected something to come from there. Something
was coming from there now; and there had been a faint, uneasy sort of
whisper in that direction for some time. Now it was unmistakable.

A cow-elk, first of the wary ones to move on alarm, came trotting by,
her Roman nose held well out; a red-deer hind, galloping lightly like
some gigantic hare, her big ears turned astern; a wolf, head up,
hackles alift, alternately loping and pivoting, to listen and look
back, a wild reindeer, trotting heavily, but far more quickly than he
seemed to be--all these passed, now on one side, now on the other,
often only glimpses between the tree-boles, while the wolverine sat up
and shaded his eyes with his paws. Something was moving those beasts,
those haunters of the forest, and no little thing either. Something?
What?

Very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade,
And the whisper spreads and widens far and near;
And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now--
He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear.


Down came Gulo in that grim silence which was, except for his domestic
arguments, characteristic of the beast, and trotted to a pool hard by.
The pool was spring-fed, and covered, as to every dead leaf and stone,
with fine green moss of incomparable softness. He drank swiftly and
long, then flung about with a half-insolent, half-aggressive wave of