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 temporary. Traveling all the rest of the day and most of the night, he pushed steadily northward through the vast, virgin forest until, almost suddenly, the rolling hills became mountains. The high, humped bulk of Unaka Kanoos stood well behind the first ridges of the mountain bulwark. Not until he was back on the peak where he had been born—the peak which had always been his home until, in an evil moment, his mother had led him down into the foothills—would the big cub feel that he was safe.

Even into that lofty fastness fate followed him swiftly. Within a month after his return to Unaka he heard for the second time in his life the crack of a rifle. He fled from it, yet it seemed to pursue him, for two hours later he heard it again. An hour before sunset he ventured down to the lower slopes in search of game. He was stalking a young buck grazing a little apart from its fellows in a grassy flat under gigantic beech trees when a crashing roar deafened his ears and a fierce burning pain stabbed his right hind leg.

The wound was a slight one. It healed in less than a week. But the terror of that moment was stamped indelibly upon his consciousness; and even in his panic he recognized the man who had wounded him—a tall, stoop-shouldered, buckskin-clad man in a coonskin cap, the man who had