Small animals move in the dark, passing and repassing warily; one hears the high feathered ruffling and the plaint of sleepy birds; breezes play with the young leaves; water murmurs.
But here there was no single sound to mitigate the stillness; and, had I dared in my mossy nest behind the rocks, I would have contrived same slight stirring sound, merely to make the silence more endurable.
I could see the river, but could not hear it.

From where I lay, close to the ground, the trees stood out in shadowy clusters against the vague and hazy mist that spread low over the water.
And, as I lay watching it, without the slightest warning, a head was lifted from behind a bush.

It was the head of a wolf in silhouette against the water.
Curiously I watched it; and as I looked, from another bush another head was lifted--the round, flattened head and tasselled ears of the great grey lynx.

And before I could realize the strangeness of their proximity to each other, these two heads were joined by a third--the snarling features of a wolverine.
Then a startling and incredible thing happened; the head of the big timber-wolf rose still higher, little by little, slowly, stealthily, above the bush.

And I saw to my horror that it had the body of a man.
And, already overstrained as I was, it was a mercy that I did not faint where I lay behind my rock, so ghastly did this monstrous vision seem to me..