"But the wolves!" exclaimed Abbleway; "they may--"

"Not on my name-day," said the woman obstinately, and before he could
stop her she had opened the door and climbed down into the snow. A
moment later he hid his face in his hands; two gaunt lean figures rushed
upon her from the forest. No doubt she had courted her fate, but
Abbleway had no wish to see a human being torn to pieces and devoured
before his eyes.

When he looked at last a new sensation of scandalised astonishment took
possession of him. He had been straitly brought up in a small English
town, and he was not prepared to be the witness of a miracle. The wolves
were not doing anything worse to the woman than drench her with snow as
they gambolled round her.

A short, joyous bark revealed the clue to the situation.

"Are those--dogs?" he called weakly.

"My cousin Karl's dogs, yes," she answered; "that is his inn, over beyond
the trees. I knew it was there, but I did not want to take you there; he
is always grasping with strangers. However, it grows too cold to remain
in the train. Ah, ah, see what comes!"

A whistle sounded, and a relief engine made its appearance, snorting its
way sulkily through the snow. Abbleway did not have the opportunity for
finding out whether Karl was really avaricious.

THE LUMBER ROOM

The children were to be driven, as a special treat, to the sands at
Jagborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party; he was in disgrace.
Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk on
the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. Older and
wiser and better people had told him that there could not possibly be a
frog in his bread-and-milk and that he was not to talk nonsense; he
continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest nonsense, and
described with much detail the colouration and markings of the alleged
frog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frog
in Nicholas' basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there himself, so he
felt entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a frog from
the garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome bread-and-milk was
enlarged on at great length, but the fact that stood out clearest in the
whole affair, as it presented itself to the mind of Nicholas, was that
the older, wiser, and better people had been proved to be profoundly in
error in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance.

"