ment
later followed their example and disappeared between his odorous
blankets in the opposite direction.

Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and sleep still fighting
in his mind with an obscure curiosity to know what it was that had
scared Defago about the country up Fifty Island Water way,--wondering,
too, why Punk's presence had prevented the completion of what Hank had
to say. Then sleep overtook him. He would know tomorrow. Hank would tell
him the story while they trudged after the elusive moose.

Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously in
the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass
beneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night that
poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages
from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay
already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with their
dull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the wood
fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of
moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and
Defago, subtly in league with the soul of the woods as they were, would
probably have spread their delicate nostrils in vain....

But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old Punk crept from his
blankets and went down to the shore of the lake like a shadow--silently,
as only Indian blood can move. He raised his head and looked about him.
The thick darkness rendered sight of small avail, but, like the animals,
he possessed other senses that darkness could not mute. He
listened--then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hemlock stem he stood
there. After five minutes again he lifted his head and sniffed, and yet
once again. A tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself by
no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the keen air. Then, merging
his figure into the surrounding blackness in a way that only wild men
and animals understand, he turned, still moving like a shadow, and went
stealthily back to his lean-to and his bed.

And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred
gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far
ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the
direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp
with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that
w