emember feeling half angry with him for putting the thought
into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster
impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay unpleasantly upon
me.

We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our
feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have been
unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my friend's reply
struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July
weather, than this "diabolical wind."

Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the
tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from
a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe distance from the
fire, all ready for the morning meal.

We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap
of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and the white
moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against
our taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down
and covered all with its soft and delicious forgetfulness.

Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through
the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the canvas, and
saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o'clock--the threshold
of a new day--and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was
asleep still beside me; the wind howled as before; something plucked at my
heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of disturbance in my
immediate neighborhood.

I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and
fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay snugly
safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough
resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass,
however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our belongings
were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my companion. A curious
excitement was on me.

I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that
the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made
shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was
incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes
of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swaye