ough the flesh of his leg. Then began a fire fight. His
stout mittens temporarily protected his hands, and he scooped live coals
into the air in all directions, until the campfire took on the semblance
of a volcano.

But it could not last long. His face was blistering in the heat, his
eyebrows and lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable
to his feet. With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to the edge of
the fire. The wolves had been driven back. On every side, wherever the
live coals had fallen, the snow was sizzling, and every little while a
retiring wolf, with wild leap and snort and snarl, announced that one
such live coal had been stepped upon.

Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies, the man thrust his
smouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his feet. His
two dogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served as a course
in the protracted meal which had begun days before with Fatty, the last
course of which would likely be himself in the days to follow.

"You ain't got me yet!" he cried, savagely shaking his fist at the hungry
beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was agitated,
there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to him across
the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.

He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him. He extended
the fire into a large circle. Inside this circle he crouched, his
sleeping outfit under him as a protection against the melting snow. When
he had thus disappeared within his shelter of flame, the whole pack came
curiously to the rim of the fire to see what had become of him. Hitherto
they had been denied access to the fire, and they now settled down in a
close-drawn circle, like so many dogs, blinking and yawning and
stretching their lean bodies in the unaccustomed warmth. Then the she-
wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a star, and began to howl. One by one
the wolves joined her, till the whole pack, on haunches, with noses
pointed skyward, was howling its hunger cry.

Dawn came, and daylight. The fire was burning low. The fuel had run
out, and there was need to get more. The man attempted to step out of
his circle of flame, but the wolves surged to meet him. Burning brands
made them spring aside, but they no longer sprang back. In vain he
strove to drive them back. As he gave up and stumbled inside his circle,
a wolf leaped for him, missed, and l