The otter had not heard Baree, and in another moment Napanekik, his wife, came sailing out of a patch of gloom, and behind her came three little otters, leaving behind them four shimmering wakes in the oily-looking water.  What happened after that made Baree forget for a few minutes that he was lost.  Nekik had disappeared under the surface, and now he came up directly under his unsuspecting mate with a force that lifted her half out of the water.  Instantly he was gone again, and Napanekik took after him fiercely.  To Baree it did not look like play.  Two of the baby otters had pitched on the third, which seemed to be fighting desperately.  The chill and ache went out of Baree’s body.  His blood ran excitedly.  He forgot himself, and let out a bark.  In a flash the otters disappeared.  For several minutes the water in the pool continued to rock and heave—­and that was all.  After a little, Baree drew himself back into the bushes and went on.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun should still have been well up in the sky.  But it was growing darker steadily, and the strangeness and fear of it all lent greater speed to Baree’s legs.  He stopped every little while to listen, and at one of these intervals he heard a sound that drew from him a responsive and joyous whine.  It was a distant howl—­a wolf’s howl—­straight ahead of him.  Baree was not thinking of wolves but of Kazan, and he ran through the gloom of the forest until he was winded.  Then he stopped and listened a long time.  The wolf howl did not come again.  Instead of it there rolled up from the west a deep and thunderous rumble.  Through the tree-tops there flashed a vivid streak of lightning.  A moaning whisper of wind rode in advance of the storm.  The thunder sounded nearer; and a second flash of lightning seemed searching Baree out where he stood shivering under a canopy of great spruce.

This was his second storm.  The first had frightened him terribly, and he had crawled far back into the shelter of the windfall.  The best he could find now was a hollow under a big root, and into this he slunk, crying softly.  It was a babyish cry, a cry for his mother, for home, for warmth, for something soft and protecting to nestle up to.  And as he cried, the storm burst over the forest.

Baree had never before heard so much noise, and he had never seen the lightning play in such sheets of fire as when this June deluge fell.  It seemed at times as though the whole world were aflame, and the earth seemed to shake and roll under the crashes of the thunder.  He ceased his crying and made himself as small as he could under the root, which protected him partly from the terrific beat of the rain which came down through the treetops in a flood.  It was now so black that except when the lightning ripped great holes in the gloom he could not see the spruce trunks twenty feet away.  Twice that distance from Baree there was a huge dead stub that stood out