adful, knife-edge blows.

"Oh, stop!" cried Sheila. "Stop! You're killing him!" She ran over and
caught Miss Blake's arm.

"Damn you!" said the woman fiercely. She stood breathing fast. Sweat
of pain and rage and exertion stood out on her face. "Do _you_ want
that whip?"

She half-turned, lifting her lash, and at that, with a snarl, Berg
crouched himself and bared his teeth.

Miss Blake started and stared at him. Suddenly she gave in. Pain and
anger twisted her spirit.

"You'd turn my Berg against me!" she choked, and fell heavily down on the
rug in a dead faint.

When she came to she was grim and silent. She got herself with scant
help to bed, her big bed in the corner of the living-room, and for a week
she was kept there with fever and much pain. Berg lay beside her or
followed Sheila about her work, and the woman watched them both with
ruddy eyes.

CHAPTER XI

THE PACK

In January a wind blew steadily from the east and snow came as if to
bury them alive. The cabin turned to a cave, a small square of warmth
under a mountain of impenetrable white; one door and one window only,
opening to a space of sun. Against the others the blank white lids of
winter pressed. Sheila shoveled this space out sometimes twice a day.
The dog kennels were moved into it, and stood against the side of a
snow-bank eight feet high, up which, when they were unchained, the
gaunt, wolfish animals leapt in a loosely formed pack, the great mother,
Brenda, at their head, and padded off into the silent woods in their
hungry search for food.

But, one day, they refused to go. Miss Blake, her whip in her hand,
limped out. The snow had stopped. The day was still and bright again
above the snowy firs, the mountain scraped against the blue sky like a
cliff of broken ice. The dogs had crept out of their houses and were
squatted or huddled in the sun. As she came out they rose and strained at
their tethers. One of them whined. Brenda, the mother, bared her teeth.
One by one, as they were freed, they slunk close to Miss Blake, looking
up into her face. They crowded close at her heels as she went back to the
house. She had to push the door to in their very jaws and they pressed
against it, their heads hung low, sniffing the odor of food. Presently a
long-drawn, hideous howling rose from them. Time and again Miss Blake
drove them away with lash and voice. Time and again they came back. They
scratched at the threshold, whimpered, and whine