st every hour of the twenty-four, for the
sugar-making went on day and night. And on one particular night, about
a week after his arrival, Dick was chosen to sit up and keep watch
until two o'clock in the morning, filling the kettles and replenishing
the fires when necessary.

He was quite willing to do so. And after the others had had their
evening meal at the homestead, and had returned to the shelter and to
peaceful but noisy slumbers, he cheerfully began his vigil.

There was no comfortable log at hand, he decided, so he scratched a
hole in the snow, lined it with small twigs and pieces of bark, placed
a folded blanket over all, and then settled himself in his nest with
complete satisfaction. He had the happy faculty of adapting himself to
his surroundings, and so was seldom uncomfortable, whatever other
people might be.

The woods were dark, a vast and shadowy background of gloom to the
wavering circle of firelight. The calm stars looked down between the
dark twigs of the upper branches, and the snow showed red and full of
uncertain gleams in the flicker of the flames. It was all empty and
still, and the silence at first seemed unbroken; but, owing perhaps to
the breeze and the recent thaw, on carefully listening the forest was
full of very slight sounds--sounds as if living things were moving
about in it with infinite caution and stealth. It was a disturbing
idea, and Dick was glad of the heavy breathing of his comrades in the
shelter for company.

The time passed on, and the nest in the snow was very comfortable
indeed. The woods were still full of those ghostly rustlings, but
after a while Dick ceased to notice them, and it is probable that he
was asleep.

But whether he was asleep or not, about midnight he roused quickly
enough, with the instinct that someone was near him. Owing to his wild
training, he had enough of the savage in him to lie perfectly still and
listen for several minutes before moving. The noise that must have
awakened him was not repeated, but there seemed to be an increase in
those faint, ghostly rustlings and whisperings and half-heard stealthy
footfalls, so at last he climbed reluctantly out of his cosy nest and
built up all the fires.

Having done this, he settled himself once more in the blanket-lined
hollow. The fires were now beds of leaping flame beneath the bubbling
kettles of sap, and the shifting light made it difficult to distinguish
objects at a little distance.