when I at last caught sight of the camp. The click of
my snowshoes brought a dozen big men to the door. At that moment I
felt rather than saw that they seemed troubled and alarmed at seeing
me alone; but I was too tired to notice, and no words save those of
welcome were spoken until I had eaten heartily. Then, as I started out
for another look at the wild beauty of the place under the moonlight,
a lumberman followed and touched me on the shoulder.

"Best not go far from camp alone, sir. 'T isn't above safe
hereabouts," he said in a low voice. I noticed that he glanced back
over his shoulder as he spoke.

"But why?" I objected. "There's nothing in these woods to be afraid
of."

"Come back to camp and I'll tell you. It's warmer there," he said. And
I followed to hear a strange story,--how "Andy there" was sitting on a
stump, smoking his pipe in the twilight, when he was struck and cut on
the head from behind; and when he sprang up to look, there was nothing
there, nor any track save his own in the snow. The next night
Gillie's fur cap had been snatched from his head, and when _he_ turned
there was nobody in sight; and when he burst into camp, with all his
wits frightened out of him, he could scarcely speak, and his face was
deathly white. Other uncanny things had happened since, in the same
way, and coupled with a bad accident on the river, which the men
thought was an omen, they had put the camp into such a state of
superstitious fear that no one ventured alone out of doors after
nightfall.

I thought of Kookooskoos and my own head, but said nothing. They would
only have resented the suggestion.

Next day I found my caribou, and returned to the lumber camp before
sunset. At twilight there was Kookooskoos, an enormous fellow, looking
like the end of a big spruce stub, keeping sharp watch over the
clearing, and fortunately behind the camp where he could not see the
door. I called the men and set them crouching in the snow under the
low eaves.--"Stay there a minute and I'll show you the ghost." That
was all I told them.

Taking the skin of a hare which I had shot that day, I hoisted it
cautiously on a stick, the lumbermen watching curiously. A slight
scratch of the stick, a movement of the fur along the splits, then a
great dark shadow shot over our heads. It struck the stick sharply
and swept on and up into the spruces across the clearing, taking
Bunny's skin with it.

Then one big lumberman, who saw the point,