He entered through the opening and stood on the ground below to light the fire. He didn't desire to crawl through the flames to enter the cabin. Reaching as far as he could, he was just able to insert the candle. The wind caught it, the kindling flames. Then he stood shivering, waiting for the room to warm. He had a sweeping flood of thoughts as he watched the leaping flame. Its cheerful crackle, its bright color in the gloom was almost too good to be true. In these dark forests he had learned to be wary and on guard at too great fortune. Quite often it was only a prank of perverse forest gods, before they smote him with some black disaster. It seemed to him that there was a wild laughter, a Satanic mocking in the joyous crackle that was vaguely but fearfully ominous. The promise in the rainbow, the siren's song to the mariners, the little dancing light in the marsh--promising warmth and safety but only luring the weary traveler to this death--had this same quality: the cheer, the hope, the beauty only to be blasted by misfortune. The warmth flooded in, and he looked about for something to sit on. He wished he had brought in one of the spruce logs he had cut. But it was too late to procure one now. The flames leaped at the opening of the cabin: he would be obliged to crawl laboriously through them to get into the open. Tired out, he lay down in the dry dirt, putting his arm under his head. He would soon go to sleep. But his ragged, exhausted nerves would not find rest in sleep at once. His thoughts were troubling and unpleasant. The pale firelight filled the cabin, dancing against the walls. The glare reflected wanly on the ground where he lay. All at once he was aware that his eyes were fastened upon an old cigar box on a shelf against the wall. He seemed to have a remembered interest in it,--as if long ago he had examined its contents with boyish speculations. But he couldn't remember what it contained. Likely enough it was empty. The hours were long, and the wind wailed and crept like a housebreaker about the cabin; and at last--rather more to pass the time than for any other reason--he climbed to his feet and stepped to the shelf on which the box lay. As he reached to seize it, he had a distinct premonition of misfortune. It was as if some subtle consciousness within him, knowing and remembering every detail of his past and its infinite and exact relations with his present, was warning him that to open the box was to receive knowledge that would be hateful to him. Yet he would not be cowed by such a visionary danger. He was tired out, his nerves were torn, and he was prey to his own dark imaginings. Likely enough the box was empty. It was not, however. It contained a single photograph.