under a deep windfall. After that
it was still harder for him to resist the CALL. A second and a third
night he went away; and then came the time--inevitable as the coming
and going of the moon and stars--when understanding at last broke its
way through his hope and his fear, and something told him that Neewa
would never again travel with him as through those glorious days of
old, when shoulder to shoulder they had faced together the comedies and
tragedies of life in a world that was no longer soft and green and warm
with a golden sun, but white, and still, and filled with death.

Neewa did not know when Miki went away from the den for the last time.
And yet it may be that even in his slumber the Beneficent Spirit may
have whispered that Miki was going, for there were restlessness and
disquiet in Neewa's dreamland for many days thereafter.

"Be quiet--and sleep!" the Spirit may have whispered. "The Winter is
long. The rivers are black and chill, the lakes are covered with floors
of ice, and the waterfalls are frozen like great white giants. Sleep!
For Miki must go his way, just as the waters of the streams must go
their way to the sea. For he is Dog. And you are Bear. SLEEP!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In many years there had not been such a storm in all the Northland as
that which followed swiftly in the trail of the first snows that had
driven Neewa into his den--the late November storm of that year which
will long be remembered as KUSKETA PIPPOON (the Black Year), the year
of great and sudden cold, of starvation and of death.

It came a week after Miki had left the cavern wherein Neewa was
sleeping so soundly. Preceding that, when all the forest world lay
under its mantle of white, the sun shone day after day, and the moon
and stars were as clear as golden fires in the night skies. The wind
was out of the west. The rabbits were so numerous they made hard floors
of the snow in thicket and swamp. Caribou and moose were plentiful, and
the early cry of wolves on the hunt was like music in the ears of a
thousand trappers in shack and teepee.

With appalling suddenness came the unexpected. There was no warning.
The day had dawned with a clear sky, and a bright sun followed the
dawn. Then the world darkened so swiftly that men on their traplines
paused in amazement. With the deepening gloom came a strange moaning,
and there was something in that sound that seemed like the rolling of a
great drum--the knell of an impen