188 THE MOOSE 



made an armed resistance impossible. He was 

 done. 



Then, with a plunge of his heart, he caught the 

 flare of a golden something shining through the 

 bare skeletons of phantom trees — something that 

 made his courage rise and glow again, something 

 brilliant and bright and very beautiful, something 

 that lit up the sky and put out the stars. 



It was, it must be, the fire-devil before which he 

 had fled in summer. He had feared it then, but 

 this time he was not afraid. It had come to save 

 him. If he could but bear to pass through its 

 sting and its scorch, and its flaming, dancing tongues, 

 and gain the other side, he might frustrate his 

 enemies yet. The wolves would not face the fire- 

 devil. Their courage stopped at that. And the 

 smell of singeing fur and the death-cry of the grey 

 wolf came back to the moose again. 



Near a large clump of trees, to which a trail was 

 cut through the snow, stood a roughly built log 

 cabin, some twelve feet square. All the crevices 

 between the logs were chinked with moss and earth, 

 which, laid on thickly, made the roof, through 

 which a shaky stove-pipe poked, giving outlet to a 

 spiral of smoke. Earth to a considerable height 



