ried his face
in it to ease the smart. Then he shook himself, coolly carried the
treasures he had saved back to a safe distance from the flames, and
sat down on the blankets to put on his larrigans.

His feet, clothed only in a single pair of thick socks, were almost
frozen, while the rest of his body was roasting in the fierce heat of
the conflagration. It wanted about two hours of dawn. There was not a
breath of air stirring, and the flames shot straight up, murky red and
clear yellow intertwisting, with here and there a sudden leaping
tongue of violet white. Outside the radius of the heat the tall woods
snapped sharply in the intense cold. It was so cold, indeed, that as
the man stood watching the ruin of his little, lonely home, shielding
his face from the blaze now with one hand then with the other, his
back seemed turning to ice.

The man who lives alone in the great solitude of the forest has every
chance to become a philosopher. Pete Noel was a philosopher. Instead
of dwelling upon the misfortunes which had smitten him, he chose to
consider his good luck in having got out of the shack alive. Putting
on his coat, he noted with satisfaction that its spacious pockets
contained matches, tobacco, his pipe, his heavy clasp-knife, and his
mittens. He was a hundred miles from the nearest settlement, fifty or
sixty from the nearest lumber-camp. He had no food. The snow was four
feet deep, and soft. And his trusty snowshoes, which would have made
these distances and these difficulties of small account to him, were
helping feed the blaze. Nevertheless, he thought, things might have
been much worse. What if he had escaped in his bare feet? This thought
reminded him of how cold his feet were at this moment. Well, the old
shack had been a good one, and sheltered him well enough. Now that it
would shelter him no longer, it should at least be made to contribute
something more to his comfort. Piling his blankets carefully under the
shelter of a broad stump, he sat down upon them. Then he filled and
lighted his pipe, leaned back luxuriously, and stretched out his feet
to the blaze. It would be time enough for him to "get a move on" when
the shack was quite burned down. The shack was home as long as it
lasted.

When the first mystic greyness, hard like steel and transparent like
glass, began to reveal strange vistas among the ancient trees, the
fire died down. The shack was a heap of ashes and pulsating, scarlet
embers, with h