g wolf, and a long, bitter snarl of warning would escape him.

"If I hadn't got important business in hand, I'd stop and flay you for
your insolence," his snarl said. "I'll do it now, if you're not careful.
Sheer off!"

And each time the wolf sheered off, in a sweeping curve, still keeping
the lone hound under careful observation.

Wolves are very acute judges; desperate fighters for their lives and
when driven by hunger, but at no time really brave. If Jan had fallen by
the way, these two would have been into him like knives. While he ran,
exhibiting his fine powers, and snarled, showing his fearlessness, no
two wolves would tackle him, and even the full pack would likely have
trailed him for miles before venturing an attack.

But, however that might be, it is a fact that Jan spared no more than
the most occasional odd ends of thought for these two silent, slinking
watchers of his trail. His active mind was concentrated upon quite other
matters, and was becoming more and more set and concentrated, more
absorbingly preoccupied with every minute of his progress.

A bloodhound judge who had watched Jan now would have known that he no
longer sniffed the trail, as he ran, for guidance. The trail was too
fresh for that. He could have followed it with his nose held high in the
air. It was for the sheer joy it brought him that he ran now with
low-hanging flews, drinking in the scent he followed. And because of the
warmth of the trail, Jan followed it at the gallop, his great frame well
extended to every stride.

Of a sudden he checked. It was exactly as though he had run his head
into a noose on the end of a snare line made fast to one of the darkling
trees which skirted his path on the right-hand side. Here the scent
which he followed left the trail almost at right angles, turning into
the wood.

A moment more and Jan came into full view of a camp-fire, beside which
were a sled, a single dog, and two men. But Jan saw no camp-fire, nor
any other thing than the track under his questing nose.

The single dog by the sled leaped to its feet with a growling bark. One
of the two men stood up sharply in the firelight, ordering his dog in to
heel. His eyes (full of wonder) lighted then on the approaching figure
of Jan, head down; and he reached for his rifle where it lay athwart the
log on which he had been sitting.

As Jan drew in, the other dog flew at his throat. Without wasting breath
upon a snarl, Jan gave the husky his