All the world was lost in snow--snow,
snow, snow--whirling, biting, stinging, drifting snow--and the puffing,
monstrous engine was compelled to stop at the command of those tiny
feathery crystals of spotless purity.

Many strong hands with shovels came to the delicately curled snowdrifts
that barred our way, and in an hour the engine could pass--only to
stick in another drift yet farther on. It was dreary work--day after
day, night after night, sticking in the drifts, digging ourselves out,
and still the snow went whirling and playing about us.

"Twenty-two hours to Emerson," said the official; but nearly two weeks
of digging passed before we did reach Emerson, and the poplar country
where the thickets stop all drifting of the snow. Thenceforth the train
went swiftly, the poplar woods grew more thickly--we passed for miles
through solid forests, then perhaps through an open space. As we neared
St. Boniface, the eastern outskirts of Winnipeg, we dashed across a
little glade fifty yards wide, and there in the middle was a group that
stirred me to the very soul.

In plain view was a great rabble of Dogs, large and small, black,
white, and yellow, wriggling and heaving this way and that way in a
rude ring; to one side was a little yellow Dog stretched and quiet in
the snow; on the outer part of the ring was a huge black Dog bounding
about and barking, but keeping ever behind the moving mob. And in the
midst, the centre and cause of it all, was a great, grim, Wolf.

Wolf? He looked like a Lion. There he stood, all
alone--resolute-calm--with bristling mane, and legs braced firmly,
glancing this way and that, to be ready for an attack in any direction.
There was a curl on his lips--it looked like scorn, but I suppose it
was really the fighting snarl of tooth display. Led by a
wolfish-looking Dog that should have been ashamed, the pack dashed in,
for the twentieth time no doubt. But the great gray form leaped here
and there, and chop, chop, chop went those fearful jaws, no other sound
from the lonely warrior; but a death yelp from more than one of his
foes, as those that were able again sprang back, and left him
statuesque as before, untamed, unmaimed, and contemptuous of them all.

How I wished for the train to stick in a snowdrift now, as so often
before, for all my heart went out to that Gray-wolf; I longed to go and
help him. But the snow-deep glade flashed by, the poplar trunks shut
out the view, and we went on to ou