It was a dark night, too, with the shivering wailing of a restless wind in the tree tops; the sort of night that makes loneliness grow until it is like some kind of a monster inside, choking off one's breath.

And on Upso-Gee's tepee, with the firelight dancing on it, there was painted in red a grotesque fiend with horns--a medicine man, or devil chaser; and this devil chaser grinned in a bloodthirsty manner at David as he sat near the fire, as if gloating over some dreadful fate that awaited him.
It _was_ lonely.

Even Baree seemed to sense his master's oppression, for he had laid his head between David's feet, and was as still as if asleep.

A long way off David could hear the howling of a wolf and it reminded him shiveringly of the lead-dog's howl that night before Tavish's cabin.

It was like the death cry that comes from a dog's throat; and where the forest gloom mingled with the firelight he saw a phantom shadow--in the morning he found that it was a spruce bough, broken and hanging down--that made him think again of Tavish swinging in the moonlight.