[Illustration]

[Illustration]

So when his friends, feeling sure that he could take care of himself,
drove home and left him, he was glad to be left. They seemed rather to
pity him for imposing on himself such long, toilsome tramps. They had
no realization of what he found in those wind-swept hills. They never
once thought what they and all their friends and every man that ever
lived has striven for and offered his body, his brain, his freedom,
and his life to buy; what they were vainly wearing out their lives in
fearful, hopeless drudgery to gain, that boy was daily finding in
those hills. The bitter, biting, blizzard wind was without, but the
fire of health and youth was within; and at every stride in his daily
march, it was _happiness_ he found, and he knew it. And he smiled such
a gentle smile when he thought of those driven home in the sleigh
shivering and miserable, _yet pitying him_.

[Illustration]

Oh, what a glorious sunset he saw that day on Kennedy's Plain, with
the snow dyed red and the poplar woods aglow in pink and gold! What a
glorious tramp through the darkening woods as the shadows fell and
the yellow moon came up!

[Illustration]

"These are the best days of my life," he sang. "These are my golden
days!"

And as he neared the great Spruce Hill, Yan yelled a long hurrah! "In
case they are still there," he told himself, but really for very joy
of feeling all alive.

As he listened for the improbable response, he heard a faint howling
of wolves away over Kennedy's Plain. He mimicked their cry and quickly
got response, and noticed that they were gathering together, doubtless
hunting something, for now it was their hunting-cry. Nearer and nearer
it came, and his howls brought ready answers from the gloomy echoing
woods, when suddenly it flashed upon him: "It's _my_ trail you are on.
_You are hunting me._"

[Illustration: "Sat down in the Moonlit Snow."]

The road now led across a little open plain. It would have been
madness to climb a tree in such a fearful frost, so he went out to the
middle of the open place and sat down in the moonlit snow--a
glittering rifle in his hands, a row of shining brass pegs in his
belt, and a strange, new feeling in his heart. On came the chorus, a
deep, melodious howling, on to the very edge of the woods, and there
the note changed. Then there was silence. They must have seen him
sitting there, for the light was like day, but they went around in
the edge of