humping him on the back and choking him roughly:

"_Tamahnawus_ nothing!" he cried. "Buck up! Don't be a fool! I've seen
it before. Three years ago--in the Lillimuit, it was. It's the white
death. Waseche and I hid in an ice cave. Tonight will come the strong
cold."

The boy's voice sounded strangely toneless and flat, and when he
finished speaking he coughed. 'Merican Joe's hands had dropped to his
side and he stood dumbly watching as Connie loosened the heavy woollen
muffler from his waist and wound it about the lower half of his face.
"Cover your mouth and don't talk," the boy commanded. "Breathe through
your muffler. We can still travel, but it will be hard. We will be very
tired but we must find shelter--a cave--a cabin--a patch of timber--or
tonight we will freeze--Look! Look!" he cried suddenly, pointing to the
northward, "a mirage!"

Both stared awe-struck as the picture formed rapidly before their eyes
and hung inverted in the brassy sky just above the horizon foreshortened
by the sweep of a low, snow-buried ridge. Both had seen mirages
before--mirages that, like a faulty glass, distorted shapes and
outlines, and mirages that brought real and recognizable places into
view like the one they were staring at in spell-bound fascination. So
perfect in detail, and so close it hung in the heavy, dead air that it
seemed as though they could reach out and touch it--a perfect inverted
picture of what appeared to be a two or three mile sweep of valley, one
side sparsely wooded, and the other sloping gently upward into the same
low-rolling ridge that formed their own northern horizon. Each stunted
tree showed distinctly, and in the edge of the timber stood a cabin,
with the smoke rising sluggishly from the chimney. They could see the
pile of split firewood at its corner and even the waterhole chopped in
the ice of the creek, with its path leading to the door. But it was not
the waterhole, or the firewood, or the cabin itself that held them
fascinated. It was the little square of scarlet cloth that hung limp and
motionless and dejected from a stick thrust beneath the eave of the tiny
cabin. It was a horrible thing to look upon for those two who knew its
significance--that flag glowing like a splotch of blood there in the
brazen sky with the false suns dancing above it.

"The plague flag!" cried Connie.

And almost in the same breath 'Merican Joe muttered:

"De red death!"

[Illustration: "It was a terrible thing to