like a ghost each time the fires swept the sky, as if defying the flaming hands up there to strike—­and strike, at last, one of them did!  A bluish tongue of snapping flame ran down the old stub; and as it touched the earth, there came a tremendous explosion above the treetops.  The massive stub shivered, and then it broke asunder as if cloven by a gigantic ax.  It crashed down so close to Baree that earth and sticks flew about him, and he let out a wild yelp of terror as he tried to crowd himself deeper into the shallow hole under the root.

With the destruction of the old stub the thunder and lightning seemed to have vented their malevolence.  The thunder passed on into the south and east like the rolling of ten thousand heavy cart wheels over the roofs of the forest, and the lightning went with it.  The rain fell steadily.  The hole in which he had taken shelter was partly filled with water.  He was drenched.  His teeth chattered as he waited for the next thing to happen.

It was a long wait.  When the rain finally stopped, and the sky cleared, it was night.  Through the tops of the trees Baree could have seen the stars if he had poked out his head and looked upward.  But he clung to his hole.  Hour after hour passed.  Exhausted, half drowned, footsore, and hungry, he did not move.  At last he fell into a troubled sleep, a sleep in which every now and then he cried softly and forlornly for his mother.  When he ventured out from under the root it was morning, and the sun was shining.

At first Baree could hardly stand.  His legs were cramped.  Every bone in his body seemed out of joint.  His ear was stiff where the blood had oozed out of it and hardened, and when he tried to wrinkle his wounded nose, he gave a sharp little yap of pain.  If such a thing were possible, he looked even worse than he felt.  His hair had dried in muddy patches; he was dirt-stained from end to end; and where yesterday he had been plump and shiny, he was now as thin and wretched as misfortune could possibly make him.  And he was hungry.  He had never before known what it meant to be really hungry.

When he went on, continuing in the direction he had been following yesterday, he slunk along in a disheartened sort of way.  His head and ears were no longer alert, and his curiosity was gone.  He was not only stomach hungry:  mother hunger rose above his physical yearning for something to eat.  He wanted his mother as he had never wanted her before in his life.  He wanted to snuggle his shivering little body close up to her and feel the warm caressing of her tongue and listen to the mothering whine of her voice.  And he wanted Kazan, and the old windfall, and that big blue spot that was in the sky right over it.  As he followed again along the edge of the creek, he whimpered for them as a child might grieve.