massing slowly over the open space above the spruce tops.
Darkness was falling. In the whisper of the wind and the dead stillness
of the thickening gloom there was the sullen brewing of storm. Tonight
there would be no glorious sunset. There would be no twilight hour in
which to follow the trail, no moon, no stars--and unless Pierrot and
the factor were already on their way, they would not start in the face
of the pitch blackness that would soon shroud the forest.

Nepeese shivered and rose to her feet. For the first time Baree got up,
and he stood close at her side. Above them a flash of lightning cut the
clouds like a knife of fire, followed in an instant by a terrific crash
of thunder. Baree shrank back as if struck a blow. He would have slunk
into the shelter of the brush wall of the wigwam, but there was
something about the Willow as he looked at her which gave him
confidence. The thunder crashed again. But he retreated no farther. His
eyes were fixed on Nepeese.

She stood straight and slim in that gathering gloom riven by the
lightning, her beautiful head thrown back, her lips parted, and her
eyes glowing with an almost eager anticipation--a sculptured goddess
welcoming with bated breath the onrushing forces of the heavens.
Perhaps it was because she was born during a night of storm. Many times
Pierrot and the dead princess mother had told her that--how on the
night she had come into the world the crash of thunder and the flare of
lightning had made the hours an inferno, how the streams had burst over
their banks and the stems of ten thousand forest trees had snapped in
its fury--and the beat of the deluge on their cabin roof had drowned
the sound of her mother's pain, and of her own first babyish cries.

On that night, it may be, the Spirit of Storm was born in Nepeese. She
loved to face it, as she was facing it now. It made her forget all
things but the splendid might of nature. Her half-wild soul thrilled to
the crash and fire of it. Often she had reached up her bare arms and
laughed with joy as the deluge burst about her. Even now she might have
stood there in the little open until the rain fell, if a whine from
Baree had not caused her to turn. As the first big drops struck with
the dull thud of leaden bullets about them, she went with him into the
balsam shelter.

Once before Baree had passed through a night of terrible storm--the
night he had hidden himself under a root and had seen the tree riven by
l