ht
of day was fighting to hold its own against the deepening pall of
flame-lit gloom advancing with the wind.

There seemed to come a low and distant sound with that wind, so
indistinct that to David's ears it was like a murmur a thousand miles
away. He strained his ears to hear, and as he listened, there came
another sound--a moaning, sobbing voice below his window! It was grief
he heard now, something that went to his heart and held him cold and
still. The voice was sobbing like that of a child, yet he knew it was
not a child's. Nor was it a woman's. A figure came out slowly in his
view, humped over, twisted in its shape, and he recognized Andre, the
Broken Man. David could see that he was crying like a child, and he was
facing the flaming forests, with his arms reaching out to them in his
moaning. Then, of a sudden, he gave a strange cry, as if defiance had
taken the place of grief, and he hurried across the meadow and
disappeared into the timber where a great lightning-riven spruce
gleamed dully white through the settling veil of smoke-mist.

For a space David looked after him, a strange beating in his heart. It
was as if he had seen a little child going into the face of a deadly
peril, and at last he shouted out for some one to bring back the Broken
Man. But there was no answer from under his window. The guard was gone.
Nothing lay between him and escape--if he could force the white birch
bars from the window.

He thrust himself against them, using his shoulder as a battering-ram.
Not the thousandth part of an inch could he feel them give, yet he
worked until his shoulder was sore. Then he paused and studied the bars
more carefully. Only one thing would avail him, and that was some
object which he might use as a lever.

He looked about him, and not a thing was there in the room to answer
the purpose. Then his eyes fell on the splendid horns of the caribou
head. Black Roger's discretion had failed him there, and eagerly David
pulled the head down from the wall. He knew the woodsman's trick of
breaking off a horn from the skull, yet in this room, without log or
root to help him, the task was difficult, and it was a quarter of an
hour after he had last seen the Broken Man before he stood again at the
window with the caribou horn in his hands. He no longer had to hold his
breath to hear the low moaning in the wind, and where there had been
smoke-gloom before there were now black clouds rolling and twisting up
over