ated his imagination till he
could discern in it the beat of scurrying wings and the patter of
pernicious padded feet. "If I am appalled by the wilderness now, what
would it seem to me were I alone!" he whispered.

Then, too, his bed of boughs discovered unforeseen humps and knobs, and
by the time he had adjusted himself to their discomfort, it became
evident that his blankets were both too thin and too short. And the gelid
air sweeping down from the high places submerged him as if with a flood
of icy water. In vain he turned and twisted within his robes. No sooner
were his shoulders covered and comfortable than his hip-bones began to
ache. Later on the blood of his feet congealed, and in the effort to wrap
them more closely, he uncovered his neck and shoulders. The frost became
a wolf, the night an oppressor. "I must have a different outfit," he
decided. And then thinking that this was but early autumn, he added:
"What will it be a month later?" He began to doubt his ability to measure
up to the heroic standard of a forest patrol.

The firelight flickered low, and a prowling animal daringly sniffed about
the camp, pawing at the castaway fragments of the evening meal. The youth
was rigid with fear. "Is it a bear? Shall I call the Supervisor?" he
asked himself.

He felt sadly unprotected, and wished McFarlane nearer at hand. "It may
be a lion, but probably it is only a coyote, or a porcupine," he
concluded, and lay still for what seemed like hours waiting for the beast
to gorge himself and go away.

He longed for morning with intense desire, and watched an amazingly
luminous star which hung above the eastern cliff, hoping to see it pale
and die in dawn light, but it did not; and the wind bit even sharper. His
legs ached almost to the cramping-point, and his hip-bones protruded like
knots on a log. "I didn't know I had door-knobs on my hips," he remarked,
with painful humor, and, looking down at his feet, he saw that a thick
rime was gathering on his blanket. "This sleeping out at night isn't what
the books crack it up to be," he groaned again, drawing his feet up to
the middle of his bed to warm them. "Shall I resign to-morrow? No, I'll
stay with it; but I'll have more clothing. I'll have blankets six inches
thick. Heaps of blankets--the fleecy kind--I'll have an air-mattress."
His mind luxuriated in these details till he fell into an uneasy drowse.

VI

STORM-BOUND

Wayland was awakened by the mellow voi