“Say, you, Boss Simpson,” he began suddenly, as the last shower of sparks went up into the air, “you don’t—­smell nothing, do you—­nothing pertickler, I mean?” The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled a dreadfully serious thought in his mind.  A shiver ran down his back.

“Nothing but burning wood,” he replied firmly, kicking again at the embers.  The sound of his own foot made him start.

“And all the evenin’ you ain’t smelt—­nothing?” persisted the guide, peering at him through the gloom; “nothing extrordiny, and different to anything else you ever smelt before?”

“No, no, man; nothing at all!” he replied aggressively, half angrily.

Defago’s face cleared.  “That’s good!” he exclaimed with evident relief.  “That’s good to hear.”

“Have you?” asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted the question.

The Canadian came closer in the darkness.  He shook his head.  “I guess not,” he said, though without overwhelming conviction.  “It must’ve been just that 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.