w I could not keep up a hay fire,
even if I could start one. Besides, I had a sudden fear that some of
the Pike gang might visit the shanty to look for an answer to their
letter, and I thought if I simply lay still I might escape, even if
they did come. I ate part of my luncheon, and gave Kaiser part. Then I
drew my big overcoat around me as best I could, made the dog lie close
up to me on the hay, and tried to sleep.

My ankle pained me a good deal, and the bed was not comfortable. I
thought as I lay there that my mother and father and all the folks at
home must then be at the church for the Christmas-tree; and I could
see the lights, and the bright toys on the tree, and all the boys and
girls I knew getting their presents and laughing and talking; and the
singing and the music of the organ came to me almost as if I had been
there. Then I thought of how, if I were home, later I should hang up
my stocking and find other gifts in it in the morning, and of what a
pleasant time Christmas was at home.

Every few minutes a sharp twinge of pain in my ankle would bring me
back to my deplorable condition there in that deserted shack sunk in
the frozen snow, and I would be half ready to cry; but, with all my
thinking of both good and bad, I did at last get to sleep. Once, some
time in the night, I woke up with a jump at a strange, unearthly,
whooping noise which seemed to be in the room itself, but at last I
made it out to be an owl to-whooing on the roof. Again I heard wolves,
very distant, and twenty times in imagination there sounded in my ears
the tramp of Pike's horses.

When morning came I crawled to the door again. There were six inches
of soft, new snow, but the sun was rising clear, and there were no
signs of a blizzard. I got back to the hay and for a long time rubbed
my ankle. I thought it was a little better. I ate the rest of the food
and called myself names for ever having left the town. The fires, I
knew, were out, and everything invited an attack of the robbers, while
I lay crippled in a cold shack two miles away, on the road along which
they would come and go. I had been in no greater terror at any time
since my troubles began than I was now on this Christmas morning.

Perhaps it was nine o'clock when I noticed that Kaiser was acting very
peculiarly. He stood in the middle of the room with his head lowered
and a scowl on his face. Then I saw the hair on his back slowly begin
to rise; next he growled. I told