inute task of thrusting his hand upward along the rough door all
the forces of his being down to the last shred of vitality. At once the
indomitable spirit of the woods-runner answered the call. Regis Brugiere
concentrated his will on a pinpoint. Like a sprinter his volition was
fixed on a goal, beyond which lay collapse.

Inch by inch the hand kept on, blindly groping. It reached the
latch-string; passed it by.

Then, like a flame before it expires, the spirit of Regis Brugiere
blazed out. With strange contortions of the body and writhings of the
face his form came upright, the arm still reaching. So it swayed for a
moment, then fell. The man's will-power ran from him in a last supreme
effort. Twice more he struggled blindly, but the efforts were feeble. At
last with a sigh he gave himself to the cold, which had been waiting.
And the cold was kind. Regis Brugiere fell asleep.

Five days later Jim, the black-and-white setter-dog, ceased his restless
wanderings to and fro, ceased trying to leap to the oiled window beyond
which lay the forest and food in abundance, ceased vain clawings below
the shelf-high supplies of flour and bacon, to curl himself by the door
as near as possible to the master who lay without. There he starved,
dreaming in a merciful torpor of partridges in the snow. Thus was the
way of justice fulfilled in the case of Regis Brugiere and the
setter-dog Jim.

VI

THE LIFE OF THE WINDS OF HEAVEN

I

Barbara hesitated long between the open-work stockings and the
plain-silk, but finally decided on the former. Then she vouchsafed a
pleased little smile to her pleasant little image in the mirror, and
stepped through the door into the presence of her aunt. The aunt was
appropriately astonished. This was the first time Barbara had spread her
dainty chiffon wings in the air of the great north woods. Strangely,
daintily incongruous she looked now against the rough walls of the
cabin, against the dark fringe of the forest beyond the door.

Barbara was a petite little body with petite little airs of babylike
decision. She knew that her greatest attraction lay in the strange
backward poise of her head, bringing her chin, pointed and adorable, to
the tilt of maddening charm. She was perfectly aware, too, of her very
full red lips, the colour of cherries, but with the satiny finish of the
peach; and she could not remain blind to the fact that her light hair
and her velvet-black eyes were in rare and