at song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing in lumber
camps and godforsaken places like that, when they've skeered the
Wendigo's somewhere around, doin' a bit of swift traveling.--"

"And what's the Wendigo, pray?" Simpson asked quickly, irritated because
again he could not prevent that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knew
that he was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it. Yet a
rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better judgment, and his fear.

Defago turned swiftly and looked at him as though he were suddenly about
to shriek. His eyes shone, but his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said,
or whispered rather, for his voice sank very low, was: "It's
nuthin'--nuthin' but what those lousy fellers believe when they've bin
hittin' the bottle too long--a sort of great animal that lives up
yonder," he jerked his head northwards, "quick as lightning in its
tracks, an' bigger'n anything else in the Bush, an' ain't supposed to be
very good to look at--that's all!"

"A backwoods superstition--" began Simpson, moving hastily toward the
tent in order to shake off the hand of the guide that clutched his arm.
"Come, come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern going! It's
time we were in bed and asleep if we're going to be up with the sun
tomorrow...."

The guide was close on his heels. "I'm coming," he answered out of the
darkness, "I'm coming." And after a slight delay he appeared with the
lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The
shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so,
and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole
tent trembled as though a gust of wind struck it.

The two men lay down, without undressing, upon their beds of soft balsam
boughs, cunningly arranged. Inside, all was warm and cozy, but outside
the world of crowding trees pressed close about them, marshalling their
million shadows, and smothering the little tent that stood there like a
wee white shell facing the ocean of tremendous forest.

Between the two lonely figures within, however, there pressed another
shadow that was _not_ a shadow from the night. It was the Shadow cast by
the strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped suddenly upon
Defago in the middle of his singing. And Simpson, as he lay there,
watching the darkness through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge
into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique and profound