weak and starved. The sun disappeared behind the forest. The moon
rolled up from the east. The sky glittered with stars--and all through
the night Baree lay as if dead. When morning came, he dragged himself
to the stream for a drink. With his last strength he went on. It was
the wolf urging him--compelling him to struggle to the last for his
life. The dog in him wanted to lie down and die. But the wolf spark in
him burned stronger. In the end it won. Half a mile farther on he came
again to the green timber.

In the forests as well as in the great cities fate plays its changing
and whimsical hand. If Baree had dragged himself into the timber half
an hour later he would have died. He was too far gone now to hunt for
crayfish or kill the weakest bird. But he came just as Sekoosew, the
ermine, the most bloodthirsty little pirate of all the wild--was making
a kill.

That was fully a hundred yards from where Baree lay stretched out under
a spruce, almost ready to give up the ghost. Sekoosew was a mighty
hunter of his kind. His body was about seven inches long, with a tiny
black-tipped tail appended to it, and he weighed perhaps five ounces. A
baby's fingers could have encircled him anywhere between his four legs,
and his little sharp-pointed head with its beady red eyes could slip
easily through a hole an inch in diameter. For several centuries
Sekoosew had helped to make history. It was he--when his pelt was worth
a hundred dollars in king's gold--that lured the first shipload of
gentlemen adventurers over the sea, with Prince Rupert at their head.
It was little Sekoosew who was responsible for the forming of the great
Hudson's Bay Company and the discovery of half a continent. For almost
three centuries he had fought his fight for existence with the trapper.
And now, though he was no longer worth his weight in yellow gold, he